Can you describe your role at Conway Medical Center?
I’m responsible for all administrative duties in the emergency department, which includes finance, capital, budgeting, and maintaining staffing. I have a clinical coordinator who handles clinical issues.
You’ve had a fast growing ED in recent years. What were the biggest issues that led you toward an EDIS system?
We were a totally paper department. All the nursing documentation and charging was done manually. One of our goals was to find a system with a very robust, streamlined charge capture module embedded in it. We used a very subjective “tick sheet” in the ED, and nurses would document differently. Using an electronic system with charge capture takes subjectivity out of the equation.
How long before you saw a return on investment for the MEDHOST system you chose?
We had total ROI in less than 9 months. We did a 60-day audit before we turned on the charge capture component. We found that, coding manually, nurses miscoded 74.7 percent of the charges. When we took that to the CFO, he gave us the approval to use the charge capture component. At the end of 2007, we saw an increase of 31 percent in net revenue. The following year revenue for the department was up by 22.1 percent.
What advice would you offer to colleagues hoping to implement an EDIS system?
We had to convince our finance people with solid data. It’s a big investment, so you want to be sure you get the most for your dollar. That weighed heavily on the minds of upper-level administration. You need to investigate what you want to achieve by going electronically, and weigh the pros and cons.
Steve Lanning is director of Emergency Services at Conway Medical Center (Conway, S.C.)