Kemptville District Hospital has reached stage 4 in the process to become a completely paperless environment. This achievement puts KDH in the top five percent of Canadian hospitals for electronic medical record adoption. There are eight stages, 0 to 7, in the internationally-recognized Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model or EMRAM process that charts a healthcare organization’s path to a fully paperless patient environment. KDH staff are excited and proud to have reached Stage 4 – only 5.2 percent of Canadian hospitals have achieved this designation.
In Ontario, the average Electronic Medical Record or EMRAM score for all for acute hospitals is 2.9. For patients, the adoption of electronic medical record technologies means enhanced quality and safety of care. Louis Guilbeault, KDH’s Vice President of Organizational Performance and Operations, says “This is an important advancement in terms of efficiency and patient safety, as it both saves time and removes the risk of errors that could occur when physician orders were done on paper.”
Kemptville District Hospital has just reached stage 4 out of 7 in the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model process to become a paperless environment. Only 5.2 percent of Canadian hospitals have achieved this designation. To reach Stage 4, hospitals must have physicians entering orders by computer. This technology enables KDH doctors to electronically select medications and diagnostic tests to be given to each patient. This information is then electronically sent to the appropriate department as well as to the patient’s electronic record. KDH’s next goal is Stage 5, which it aims to achieve by the end of the current fiscal year.
Photo 1: Tim Farncombe, Kemptville District Hospital’s IS/IT Manager, is pictured with the Workstation On Wheels (WOW), which enables electronic medication administration recording and bedside nursing documentation on the hospital’s inpatient medical and surgical units.
Photo 2: Kemptville District Hospital Pharmacy staff (left to right): Cindy Kerkhof, Mary Whyte (Charge Pharmacist) and Karen Schipper, have worked tirelessly to help implement new EMR technologies, including PACMED, which packages, labels and barcodes individual patient medication doses and dispenses them by date and time.
