Hospital conducts third phase of EHR system on Rota, Tinian

The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp is doing the final tweaks for the final rollout of its new Electronic Health Records, this time by doing a test run on both Tinian and Rota over the last week.

CHCC’s chief financial officer Jack Taisague disclosed that CHCC is now looking at implementing the system for both outpatient and Tinian and Rota locations.

“For this reason, the chief executive officer [Esther Muña] sent a team this week to assess the Tinian and Rota sites and the information technology group to do a site assessment to determine the equipment needed for a successful rollout,” Taisague said.

He said they also needed to determine the strength of the network capabilities on both islands.

The assessment reviewed the financial processes and changes that are needed to help make the EHR rollout successful. CHCC’s Information Technology director Anthony Reyes checked out the operational requirements for EHR and determined the equipment needed, as well as adequate wiring for the “influx of new work stations, printers and related equipment.”

According to Taisague, Reyes determined that CHCC will be ready to get what needs to be taken care of and that the main issue is the strength and viability of the Internet connection.

“IT is working on solutions to bringing both islands online and live to the hospital’s system for the first time ever,” Taisague said.

He said the University of Hawaii is teaming up with CHCC’s staff for the implementation of the EHR system.

During the assessment on Rota and Tinian, Stephanie Miyasaki of UOH was assigned to determining the workflow and operational procedures and translating the process into EHR.

“She will ensure EHR workflow is optimized, efficient and conductive to their working environment. On this trip she was able to give Tinian and Rota a demo of the EHR system to give insights into the functionality and usability of the system as well as to test the network response time,” Taisague said.

Taisague and CHCC’s billing department staff gave Tinian a glimpse of how much more efficient the processes will be under EHR and he helped implement a new electronic process to check in, admit, and track payments and to report daily and monthly back to CHCC.

“The tentative intent is to roll-out the EHR on both inpatient and outpatient and on Tinian and Rota by the end of the year if all goes well,” Taisague said.

The project was first initiated at CHC on Nov. 3, 2013, and was primarily focused on inpatient areas. The project’s first phase centered on documentation, which includes vital signs, nursing notes and physician’s notes, and medication administration records, among others.

The second phase was rolled out on Feb. 3, 2014, and concentrated on computerized physician order entry, which also basically allows authorized nurses to go to EHR to place medication orders when deemed necessary.

At present, the hospital’s laboratory unit is among the sections that now use the electronic health record system, which allows the automated transfer of records to attending physicians.