The Federal Government has promised to offer millions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to use it. The State of Oregon has created a specific branch of government to spend additional millions of dollars to help doctors implement it. What is it? We're talking about Electronic Health Records, better known as EHR. But what exactly does an EHR look like, what's in it, and why is a doctor who has one better equipped to care for you than one who doesn't?
Bend Memorial Clinic was the first medical office in the region, and among the very first in the State, to use a comprehensive EHR. We've been using it to care for you since 2005.
But what's in an electronic medical record, you might ask. More to the point, when you're talking with your BMC provider and he or she may be clicking on that laptop in hand, what are they looking at? Let's dispel the mystery.
Below is a snapshot of my own
personal health record (I've blocked out certain private information and set up a link so you can see it better.) As you can see, there is a lot of useful information on one screen. (If you are a BMC customer, yours is formatted in the same way.) Let's walk through the various key elements on the screen and why they are valuable in your own care.
The first thing to notice is that the screen is viewed in a "browser." This means your BMC provider can access your records securely from any web-linked computer, including from home, during travel, etc. This is incredibly valuable to you because it means when you have to reach your doctor after hours, they can get on-line and view your medical information instantly and then give you proper instructions based on your complete record. I can report from personal experience that our providers often access your medical record at one in the morning, from home, while talking you through a care concern (my wife takes phone calls for our pediatric department after hours). No need to feel bad, I'm used to it.
Next, notice that across the top is your key identifying information. This helps your BMC provider quickly gather helpful information such as your age, your primary care physician, and any directives. It also shows any allergies you might have, which is very important in helping ensure against adverse drug reactions.
Down the far left hand side are links to a couple key functions that are special to BMC. Because we have over 110 different providers across 30-plus specialties, and all working as a single team, each needs to be able to quickly send a message to the other to ensure your care moves seamlessly between different specialties and services. So here we have a sort of email system that allows providers to send clinical "tasks" to each other, alerting one another about a referral or a lab result important to your care. Even some non-BMC providers in the community can communicate with us in this manner as we have provided them access to this function.
The more, or less, center column with the scroll bar showing things like Dermatology, Family Medicine and Urgent Care as bold line items is a listing of all of the visits and other care provided to you either at one of our clinics, the hospital, or outside referral services, since 2003. The entire list can be sorted at will to better access key past medical history quickly and completely. For instance, in my own chart shown here, Urgent Care has been selected and shows a recent Urgent Care visit.
Within this list of visits in my record, the line item in blue has been chosen. It is for a BMC Urgent Care visit. The window just to the right shows the open note content for that visit. You'll note it is an x-ray report. (The actual x-ray image itself can also be viewed electronically.) Every item within the left scroll bar window can be clicked on to bring up the actual note or document related to that visit or event. Even if you have medical records transferred in to BMC, they too will show up on this list. TotalCare means total information.
Every day, we add some 5,000 new records to our EHR. None are more important to us than your own visit information. Both the historical and new records are available to any BMC provider instantaneously from any of our locations - Sisters, Redmond and Bend Eastside and Westside. Such is the power of an EHR in the hands of a BMC primary care physician or specialist, laboratory technician or nutritionist, urgent care nurse or imaging center technician. Each can provide you with the best posible care by accessing your complete medical record whenever you need care.
While the Federal and State governments are talking about EHR, BMC is well into our 5th year of using it with great success and in support of your TotalCare experience. Thanks to your trust in us, we have over 250,000 records of care ready and waiting to assist you with your next preventive care visit, illness or injury.
That's a lot of information and a commitment to the benefits of EHR. That's your BMC care. That's TotalCare.
