computer technology

YIKES! We have regular computers on each unit. Email and microsoft outlook. Great way to get information out to the floor.

I am excited about the Millenium system, mostly because it eliminates recaps at the end of the month! I spend $27 X 40 hours for pool staff to come in each month and work on recaps! I also read in the nursing literature that bar coding for med administration will be required. That is a feature of millenium. It is expected to save us money as well, according to their preliminary review. It definitely will make the medpass shorter, I think! Once all have learned to use it, that is, and their training program sounds pretty comprehensive!

Caretracker works well. If there are any admissions for the weekend, our informatics person puts them in the Caretracker ahead of time. They just don't have data entered by the staff if they aren't there (but of couse, sometimes staff enters the data anyway ) If someone goes to the hospital, we leave them in Caretracker in case they come back on the weekend. We had issues in the beginning like you describe. We always had "paper" flow sheets on hand, just in case. Now we have trained unit supervisors and unit clerks on the caretracker and my assistant is trained as well so, other than breakdowns, we have several to troubleshoot, although very few problems arise.