The familiar jokes about doctors' messy handwriting will no longer have a place at 13 Brown St., now that Health Services is in the process of switching from paper-based to electronic record keeping.
Health Services has kept some records electronically over the past 13 years, but under the new system, Medicat, all medical records will be kept electronically, said Health Services' Systems Manager, Deborah Nagle.
Medicat is a system specifically designed for college health care centers, said Assistant Director Lynn Dupont. It is used by over 160 colleges and has been around for 15 years. Most colleges use the system only for making appointments and checking in patients, but Brown Health Services will use the system for all record keeping.
Medicat organizes data differently than the former system and can be used for care and disease analysis as well as the nuts and bolts of diagnoses and prescriptions. If Health Services wanted to study the quality of treatment for mononucleosis, for example, Medicat could look up 50 random cases for analysis, Nagle said.
Whereas patients who visited Health Services used to produce paper charts, they will now have an electronic medical record, said Medical Director Dr. Edward Wheeler.
All records for this year's first-year class and transfer students are electronic. Upperclassmen's files are now under a hybrid system - all new information will be entered electronically, but past years' reports will remain in paper form.
On Medicat, physicians can order prescriptions for patients immediately after diagnosis, sending them directly to the pharmacy via computer. With this method, prescriptions should be ready for pick up when students arrive at the pharmacy after their appointments. Health Services can also access the records quickly any time of day. Since the clinic is open 24 hours, this allows the staff to focus more energy on patient care, Wheeler said.
Health Services is required to keep students records for five years after they graduate. Almost every week, alums call asking for their records from up to 10 years earlier, said Office Manager Jennifer Hodshon. Under Medicat, electronic medical records will be kept indefinitely. If a student asks to see his record, it can be printed out immediately.
Nagel said there are many other "exciting" possibilities for Medicat. Eventually, there may be self-check-in for students in the lobby, or online appointment scheduling. The latter will not happen this year and would be on a limited basis if implemented at all, Wheeler said.
One of the concerns over EMRs is a possible loss of medical privacy. "In a lot of ways I think this system is more secure," Wheeler said. Paper records are more easily misfiled, misplaced or accessed by other parties. Medicat has firewalls at several levels of the hardware and all staff members are required to enter more than one password to access the system, he said.
There are multiple servers in case one crashes, and data are backed up once a week and stored off-site in case of a disaster, Nagle said.
The transition has been "a little harder than we thought," Wheeler said. Much of the staff is learning to use the new system and the "learning curve" can cause some delays.
"Ultimately, it will be great once the efficiency kicks in," said Helen Lamphere '08. During her visit the first week of school, the caretaker had never used the system before and Lamphiere said it took a very long time.
Rosalyn Vega '09 agreed. "One nurse will call another nurse and ask 'how do you do this?'"
Graduate student Sarah Hirschman '05 identified herself as a "big fan of the new system" because of the shorter wait and greater efficiency.
Not only should the system be more efficient, but it should also be much more ecologically friendly, Hodshon said. They have already saved 2,000 paper folders that would have served the incoming class.
Health Services was nervous about the transition. Wheeler said he worried there would be a loss of patient-to-physician contact because the caretaker would be typing - rather than writing - notes and diagnoses during appointments. But so far, there have been no complaints, he said.
