Liberty Regional Medical Center will soon be installing an electronic filing system that officials hope will be more efficient than the current system.
The Liberty County Hospital Authority approved the new $170,000 system at its monthly meeting Tuesday.
The benefits outweigh the cost, according to LRMC CEO Scott Kroell, CFO Sam Johnson and director of nursing Donna Cochrane, who all admitted during discussion before the vote that the system is costly.
The T-SystemEV will allow the hospital to provide “high quality of care for patients,” through electronic tracking, charting and laboratory retrieval.
Besides being more accurate, it will also conserve space as Cochrane explained everything will be done on touch screens.
The hospital will lease-to-buy some of the system.
The Joint Commission, a nationally recognized accrediting and certifying organization for thousands of healthcare facilities and programs across the country, will require hospitals to be switched over to electronic filing systems by 2015, according to Lisa Pearson.
In other business Tuesday, the authority learned another orthopedic surgeon has been set to replace Dr. Christopher Vaughn, who moved last month.
The hospital received a letter of intent from Dr. Stephen Tankersley to begin no later than March 1.
Tankersley is currently practicing in North Carolina.
In his report, EMS Director Jim Turner mentioned a distant-learning program for training EMTs to become paramedics.
“This way EMTs would never have to leave their own community,” Turner said. “I think it’ll go a long way in recruiting paramedics and training people in local jobs.”
Completing local training will help ease a paramedic shortage, a national trend, according to Turner.
The program, estimated at $125,000, can possibly be done at the local Savannah Technical College campus with clinicals also completed locally.
Authority member, James Rogers, complemented the local EMS on its service after seeing them on the job.
“Not only do they provide that professional service, but the compassionate part is there,” Rogers said. “They got some skills that they can’t learn in school.”
Liberty EMS would also like to get a new van, but there is a freeze in the state’s EMS uncompensated care fund, according to Turner.
The next meeting of the Southeast Georgia Region 9 EMS council will most likely be next year and Turner can come back to the authority with more information.
“The only money he (Gov. Perdue) did allow release of is for a GPS and we don’t know when that will take place,” Turner said, speculating a state interest in knowing every ambulance’s location in case of emergency.
As a follow-up session from last month’s meeting, the authority also spent considerable amount of time fine-tuning the LRMC mission statement.
Dr. Seth Borquaye, outgoing LRMC chief of staff, was also recognized for his past three years of service and leadership.
“I’d just like to say we appreciate the hard work he’s done and will continue to do,” Jon Long, authority chairman said.
Dr. Christopher Blasy will be the next chief of staff.
The Liberty County Hospital Authority approved the new $170,000 system at its monthly meeting Tuesday.
The benefits outweigh the cost, according to LRMC CEO Scott Kroell, CFO Sam Johnson and director of nursing Donna Cochrane, who all admitted during discussion before the vote that the system is costly.
The T-SystemEV will allow the hospital to provide “high quality of care for patients,” through electronic tracking, charting and laboratory retrieval.
Besides being more accurate, it will also conserve space as Cochrane explained everything will be done on touch screens.
The hospital will lease-to-buy some of the system.
The Joint Commission, a nationally recognized accrediting and certifying organization for thousands of healthcare facilities and programs across the country, will require hospitals to be switched over to electronic filing systems by 2015, according to Lisa Pearson.
In other business Tuesday, the authority learned another orthopedic surgeon has been set to replace Dr. Christopher Vaughn, who moved last month.
The hospital received a letter of intent from Dr. Stephen Tankersley to begin no later than March 1.
Tankersley is currently practicing in North Carolina.
In his report, EMS Director Jim Turner mentioned a distant-learning program for training EMTs to become paramedics.
“This way EMTs would never have to leave their own community,” Turner said. “I think it’ll go a long way in recruiting paramedics and training people in local jobs.”
Completing local training will help ease a paramedic shortage, a national trend, according to Turner.
The program, estimated at $125,000, can possibly be done at the local Savannah Technical College campus with clinicals also completed locally.
Authority member, James Rogers, complemented the local EMS on its service after seeing them on the job.
“Not only do they provide that professional service, but the compassionate part is there,” Rogers said. “They got some skills that they can’t learn in school.”
Liberty EMS would also like to get a new van, but there is a freeze in the state’s EMS uncompensated care fund, according to Turner.
The next meeting of the Southeast Georgia Region 9 EMS council will most likely be next year and Turner can come back to the authority with more information.
“The only money he (Gov. Perdue) did allow release of is for a GPS and we don’t know when that will take place,” Turner said, speculating a state interest in knowing every ambulance’s location in case of emergency.
As a follow-up session from last month’s meeting, the authority also spent considerable amount of time fine-tuning the LRMC mission statement.
Dr. Seth Borquaye, outgoing LRMC chief of staff, was also recognized for his past three years of service and leadership.
“I’d just like to say we appreciate the hard work he’s done and will continue to do,” Jon Long, authority chairman said.
Dr. Christopher Blasy will be the next chief of staff.