Advice on making your life better and easier

tewdles, RN · Oct 6, 2009

Hello,
I'm starting a Home Health Agency in Utah and wondered if you all had any good recommendations or good experiences with electronic medical records or any advice on a software package/product that works well. There are so many software companies to choose from. I'm hoping for each nurse to have a tablet PC so they can use a stilus to tab through the intake and record the data. Hoping to have everything be wireless right at the point of care.
Any suggestions or products to stay away from.
thanks in advance.

Hello, good luck. You will likely make a bunch of $$ if you do this well. I have worked with McKesson and Homecare HomeBase software for CHC. I preferred the HomeBase as it was less time consuming and pretty straight forward in my opinion. I appreciate that you are using tablets and are not being seduced by the PDA movement. I worked with a PDA as my sole method of documentation and it was brutal...much too small to be used for so many hours routinely (well at least for this bifocal wearing 50 something). Most of us benefit from the option of a full size keyboard for large documentation requirements...can we say OASIS...!

KateRN1 · Oct 6, 2009

I totally agree with the above--stay away from the PDA. Great for quick in-and-out visits, but not for when you have oodles of documentation to type/write out. Be sure that whatever software you use also has the same forms available in hard copy for the inevitable time when the system goes down. Good luck!

RNRutRO · Oct 6, 2009

Kinnser. It's the best. Very user friendly. Look it up online and see what you think.

Good luck.

DrBunn · Oct 6, 2009

Thank you so much for the advice and your experience. I want to make our nurse's lives easy and help them have as little stress and paperwork as possible. (I'm a psychiatrist after all and don't want to create more stress).

tewdles, RN · Oct 7, 2009

I hope that part of your focus in caring for homebound patients will be in care of the psych patients. There are tons of people in communities who NEED in home psych nursing and medical care.

HHheart · Oct 8, 2009

I am the director of a moderately sized home health agency in Florida. We (myself and 2 of the companies VPs) shopped electronic/point of care devices for 2 years. We looked at literally everything out there. I can firmly say that Mckesson, Delta, Homecare Homebase, Carecentric, PCTC, Mysis and HealthWyse are all lousy. The latter is the one we got stuck with (it wasn't our first choice, but due to time constraints we had to go with them), and it has been nothing but headaches since. The one that was our first choice (Careanyware) bears looking at - it's a web-based solution which I feel is a plus. Regardless of what you go with - stay away from the palm pilots - BAD solution. Reliability is atrocious. We started out with them and have ended up replacing ALL of them with touch-screen tablets. Sheeesh what a lesson this has been! Best of luck to you in your endeavors!

RNRutRO · Oct 8, 2009

I agree with Tewdles! I myself am NOT a psych nurse, but there is such a need out there for them. Unfortunately, there just doesn't seem to be any around. And I live in a LARGE city.

Good luck with the computers. Please tell us what you went with, and how you like.

tabster224 · Oct 17, 2009

I agree with HHheart. Stay away from palm pilots/handheld phones. I worked for a company that used Homecare Homebase, and it worked ok, they then switched to their own program, still using handheld phones, and it was such a huge headache. It was slow, slow slow and very unreliable. Go with the tablets/laptops. I am back to working on paper, which is ok, but can't wait to go back to electronic charting with a program that works.