Practice Partner Ambulatory Clinics
Electronic Medical Record System
Practice Partner is MUSC’s outpatient component of MUSC’s Electronic Medical Record system. Note: Practice Partner was purchased by McKesson in 2007. Practice Partner has been in use at MUSC since 1992 and is currently actively used by over 500 attending physicians on campus and at satellite sites.
MUSC is also part of the Practice Partner Research Network, which is a unique and pioneering concept in practice-based quality improvement and research. PPRNet is the first practice-based research network linking physicians who use electronic medical records.
The Practice Partner system contributes to better patient care and practice efficiencies by:
- Enhancing patient safety, which includes a prescription writing tool that has drug interaction and allergy checking features.
- Improving documentation quality in order to better address regulatory, legal, and MUSC guidelines.
- Improving coordination of care via secure electronic storage of clinical documentation such as vital signs, clinic notes, medications, problem lists, allergies, and phone calls.
- Enhancing revenue by improved workflow efficiencies, decreased turnaround time for documentation and availability of clinical documentation for billing purposes.
- Reducing the costs of medical records storage, filing space, transcription costs and records management.
- Decreasing time spent with call backs from patients and pharmacies.
Voice Recognition System in Radiology
Voice recognition technology (Dragon-based) was completed in Radiology in early 2008. Over 90% of all reports are now completed without transcription costs. Cost savings are estimated at over $500k/year and report turnaround was vastly improved.
Infection Control Surveillance System Implementation
A new infection control surveillance system from Premier, Inc. was completed in the 2nd quarter of March 2008. A 2nd phase was completed in the summer of 2008 which added a pharmacy interface.
Patient Scheduling Integration
A project to integrate patient scheduling information into one system, IDX Flowcast, is underway with a planned completion by the end of 2008. Specifically, Radiology and surgical/OR procedures are currently not accessible via the Flowcast system; this project will integrate the existing clinic appointments in Flowcast with Radiology and OR schedules. An interim consolidated scheduling database was completed in July 2008.
Inpatient Dietary Management System
Activated a new diet/meal management system for ART opening (February 2008) that allows better patient meal selection. Plans to also implement this system in MUH, Childrens and IOP are in process.
eCareNet Priority
updated 10/17/08
