Hospital Emergency Department Saves Thousands of Dollars on Forms
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General Devices
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AMITA Health St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin, IL has over 100 years’ experience in exceptional patient care. This 184-bed, full-service hospital houses the region’s most advanced Cancer Care Center; has been nationally recognized for its Heart and Vascular Institute; and was awarded the Illinois Hospital Association Institute for Innovations in Care and Quality’s 2015 Quality Excellence Achievement Award for its state-of-the-art orthopedics program.
And how does such a forward-thinking, innovative hospital stay at the top of its game? By constantly looking for ways to improve.
Despite their full menu of services and accolades, AMITA St. Joseph suffers from bare minimum staffing in their Emergency Department. In any ED, and especially a sparsely-staffed ED, there’s no time to waste on radio calls. Nurses have lives to save- spending a decent chunk of a shift fumbling with radios isn’t doing anyone any favors- neither the patients waiting for care, nor the nurses struggling to tear themselves away from phones and 2-way radios to get to those beds. Phillip Laier, who has been an AMITA employee for over a decade, and has over two decades’ experience as an ED nurse, puts it quite plainly when he explains, “Seven minutes on the radio is too much time.”
Seven minutes on the radio is too much time. That’s why AMITA has been looking for ways to reduce the time and costs associated with incoming EMS. They’ve been looking for a system that can do more from one convenient, reliable workstation.
Luckily for AMITA St. Joseph, they already have that system.
A veteran GD CAREpoint user, AMITA has long-relied on what Laier describes as GD’s “constant reliability-” products that work, and a support team who is always available when needed. And while AMITA was enjoying the reliability of GD CAREpoint for call handling and recording, they were unaware of just how many other features they could be enjoying with GD Solutions.
After a call with the GD Client Success Team, AMITA realized that they had access to GD CAREpoint forms. They realized they had the capability to create customized forms for their team that could be easily populated, stored, and accessed both on-site and remotely, while remaining HIPAA compliant. They realized there’s a reason GD’s all-in-one workstation is used today in more hospital regions around the country than any other pre-hospital mobile telemedicine, communication or notification system.
As soon as they left the paper trail of hand-written forms behind, AMITA saw a savings of $8,000- at no extra cost for their GD CAREpoint unit. Now they’re saving on incoming calls, and the eliminated hassle of transferring patient information from paper forms to online software. Laier, who is stuck with years upon years of radio calls stored on floppy disks, especially likes the consolidation of information that the digital system has provided for AMITA.
AMITA St. Joseph’s now enjoys the time and money-saving benefits of easily and automatically time-stamping and recording all incoming EMS radio, phone calls, messages, AND patient information on customized forms, into a single workstation or portal that can be accessed both on-site and remotely by the entire team.
About GD (General Devices)
GD enables smarter patient care by empowering hospitals, EMS, community healthcare and public safety with the most comprehensive, interactive, configurable, affordable, and integrated FDA listed medical communication and mobile telemedicine solutions. The benefits of which are enhanced workflows, minimized risk, reduced costs and improved patient outcomes. Learn more at www.general-devices.com
