Patient safety and quality care are top priority at Pratt Regional Medical Center, and to enhance those priorities, PRMC recently implemented new technology. The Point of Care System, from CPSI, was launched hospital wide on February 28, 2005. The new bedside charting technology or Point of Care System has changed the way nurses, physicians and other caregivers at Pratt Regional Medical Center care for their patients.

The Point of Care System is a comprehensive multidisciplinary application that provides a real time patient care charting solution with immediate retrieval of up-to-the-moment patient data via portable and personal devices. “Our staff is now able to focus more on primary patient care and less on paperwork,” Jenny Larrison, PRMC V.P. of Patient Care explains. “Nurses are able to spend more time at the patient’s bed side, which is where they do their best work.”

Patient assessment information and vital signs entered at the bedside by the nursing staff as well as results from the clinical departments will also be available immediately to the patient's physician. Real-time patient care information, available to caregivers regardless as to whether the caregiver is in the hospital, nursing home, home health or at the doctor's office, will reduce the hospital's dependence on paper records and hand written notes. A clear on-line electronic record will allow quicker, more informed care decisions.

The system is fully integrated with patient demographics and medication order entry to provide a quick and easy method to enhance patient safety. The verification of patient medications is performed through the use of bar codes. “First the patient’s arm band is scanned and then the medication bar code is scanned to ensure it is the medication that was ordered for that patient,” Larrison said. “Providing a final bedside check prior to medication administration is one more step which will ensure safety for our patients.”

"Managing information about our patients from the time they arrive to when they leave is critical to providing the best point of care service in the most efficient way,” PRMC President and CEO, Susan Page said. “It allows our clinicians access to the most important information at anytime regardless of if they are in physical therapy or the operating room."

The purchase of the new CPSI Point of Care System is one of the goals set and achieved by the Pratt Health Foundation’s current capital campaign. The Point of Care System has been on the hospital’s capital equipment wish list for several years and could not have been purchased without the community’s support for the capital campaign.

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