Bates County Memorial Hospital-Butler, MO
We engaged EPOWERdoc in December 2008 to implement its electronic medical record, EMRDoc, for our Emergency Department at Bates County. We went live with the electronic record on April 1, 2009 and have used the product continuously since it was implemented for order entry, nursing documentation, physician documentation and discharge instructions.
Whitney Belloit (EPOWERdoc, Vice President, Operations) was assigned as our project manager and handled the implementation/training for our staff with clinical expertise and professionalism. Whitney is an Emergency Department nurse manager by trade and fully understands the different environment we work in on a daily basis. The key to our successful implementation was the attention Whitney and the EPOWERdoc staff paid to our ED workflow. They made recommendations based on their previous experience with other facilities our size and created a positive atmosphere with our staff for implementation. The onsite training Whitney provided was real-world based with an engaging and personable style.
As we implemented EPOWERdoc, our hospital was in the process of changing our core HIS system. Whitney was essential in making our interface schedule work with the implementation and post-implementation schedule. She remained our key client services contact after implementation and was always accessible as we made the difficult transition from paper to electronic. Whitney worked diligently to ensure our new HIS vendor would interface appropriately with EMRDoc. She also coordinated the training for a new physician group we engaged six months after go-live, making sure we had onsite physician education for our new doctors.
Six weeks after we installed EMRDoc, our length of stay was back to pre-installation levels and now we are faster on the electronic record than we were on paper templates.