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 just curious, what kind of comuter technology do you use at your facility? We have Caretracker for nursing assistant documentation, MDI for some things, such as MDS, and we are looking at Millenium Pharmacy's computerized med pass system. What are your facilities implementing, or thinking of implementing, and how do you like these systems? Thanks!:)

I work at one of your sister facilities, and I was just wondering how Caretracker was working for you. So far, we've only had technical problems, such as when the system crashes or won't print, but other than that it's been okay. Also, none of the floor nurses are trained to troubleshoot or add new admits/take out discharges to the computer, so if it's a weekend, someone from admin has to come in to make the necessary changes. One night it stopped working completely and no one knew how to fix it...not even the people I called. But other than that, no major problems.

Also, what do you think about the new med pass system? I have some doubts about it, but only know very little about how it works. Personally, I think I'd rather just stick with my regular old med cart, but I'm not totally against change. I just hope it doesn't make our med pass take longer.....it's long enough already!

Jennifer

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! :angryfire 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:p ) 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.:)

We've got Caretracker, computers from the lab, PCs for the MDS nurses and most of the office folks. I am the default computer geek and network administrator, because the facility hasn't realized that it will need a real geek (at least part time) yet.