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Queen of the Valley Emergency Physicians Deplay Electronic Medical Record System

Napa Valley Emergency Medical Group and Queen of the Valley Medical Center are deploying the TouchMedix™ computerized electronic medical record (EMR) system in the Queen’s emergency department. The system uses touch screens, scans, voice recognition, and patient care templates to quickly and accurately transfer clinical information in place of the traditional “paper trail.”

 

“Some of the goals of the new Queen of the Valley Medical Center EMR program include improving utilization of services, communication among care providers and efficiency of providers, addressing regulatory mandates, and providing complete medical records to the patients’ primary care and specialty providers in a more timely manner,” says Walt Mickens, Queen of the Valley Medical Center Chief Operating Officer. “Additional benefits include the reduction of paper consumption by the emergency department and affiliated physician offices by nearly 5,000 reams of paper (equivalent to approximately 300 trees) per year.”

 

According to Kara Green, Emergency Services Manager, the Emergency Department (ED) has already decreased the average time between a patient’s arrival and treatment by a physician (“Time to M.D.”) from approximately 60 minutes to 30 minutes. The ED has also made significant progress in two other measures: the average time between writing of admission orders and a patient’s occupancy of an inpatient bed (from 305 minutes to 150) and the average length of stay in the ED (from 140 minutes to 120).

 

Implementation of the Touch Medix™ system was funded by a donation from the estate of Catherine Silva to the Queen of the Valley Medical Center Foundation. “This is another example of how far a generous donation from a patient goes to improve medical care and the lives of the patients and community we serve,” says Richard Green, Chief Development Officer of the Queen of the Valley Medical Center Foundation.

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