EHR in Occ Med?

[jesskalpn]

Hi everyone, I am currently the Case Manager of Health Services for a steel mill. I'm wondering if any of you in similar settings utilize EHRs?

Here's our situation: We do annual physicals on every mill employee, additional testing for certain OSHA regulated areas of the mill, general and urgent care cases, case management/fitness for duty determinations, drug testing for employees and annual drug testing for all outside contractors (this is billed).

Currently, the amount of paper we are adding to all charts will cause us to outgrow the small space we have for storage, not to mention we actually need to move into modern methods of healthcare.

Have any of you introduced EHRs into your facilities? What was the process? Can you help me?

I know that this will be an uphill battle simply because our Medical Director isn't tech-savvy and he naturally wants to minimize spending for the budget. My goal right now is to get as much info as I can so that my presentation can't be ignored.

Thanks so much!

[Rbeck911, BSN, RN]

Check out OHM. It is a great program if you can afford it.

Also, if you want to combine paper with electronic you can use Workplace by integra. It will digitally store your OSHA mandated programs (respirator, hearing, etc.) and you can reserve your paper charts for injuries.

[katkonk, BSN, RN]

I see this post dates back to August, but I thought I would add my 2 cents anyway. I agree with Rbeck911. OHM is great, but I understand it is expensive to purchase. The only thing I didn't like about OHM when I used it, was that when you scanned in documents, you had to pull up each document to see what it was when you were looking in the file history. There didn't seem to be a way to label or have any kind of index under which the scanned documents could be filed, to shorten a search. Therefore, time consuming. One of the nicest EMR systems that I used in Occ Health was an SAP program in which they had custom built an EMR for the nurses to use, and they built it to interface with safety so that safety could only see safety information that they were entitled to see. The nurses notes and functions were restricted to only medical, so that took care of any HIPAA issues. It took a great deal of time for the IT specialists to "build" it, but it worked fine and was simply an outgrowth of the SAP system they already had use of. You might check and see if they have SAP. With a Medical Director that is not tech-savvy...ugh...that can be the worst. One of the most frustrating positions I had (back in 2000), was in a very busy Occ Health clinic where I was having to teach this new doctor (old doctor-new to this clinic) how to do the most basic of computer operations on his lap top. He had NEVER used one before....arrrrrghghghgh.... There are several other systems out there.... I HATE MEDGATE...the WORST of the worst. They must have a heck of a sales department because so many big businesses use it, but it is AWFUL. Redundant, cumbersome, not user friendly, complicated....BBBLLLLLEEEEECHCHCHCH!

Good luck with your project. Just pick a user friendly one, and OHM is the most user friendly I have come across.