In the past, maintaining hospital records meant sifting through large folders and filing cabinets, searching for documents, charts, and other patient information. In recent years, health practitioners in the U.S. have shifted toward a digital record-keeping system, a system that Pullman Regional Hospital has mastered.

PRH is one of 840 registered facilities to be recognized in a federal program to de-clutter and generally increase healthcare efficiency by using electronic record keeping. More than four thousand healthcare providers are registered altogether.

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal government allocated forty billion dollars to modernize healthcare computer systems and health information technology. Designed to improve health care quality, prevent medical errors and decrease paperwork, this piece of legislature is known as the Meaningful Use Stimulus.

Pullman Regional Hospital completed Stage Two of the Meaningful Use Stimulus, meaning they have passed various measurements of their technological information availability. Only 19 percent of registered facilities have completed Stage Two.

Catherine Murphy, registered nurse and director of clinical informatics at PRH, said every staff member at PRH who deals with patients is trained in the medical software Meditech. She said the software compiles information onto a network that makes it easily accessible to any practitioner using Meditech or other compatible health information software.

This means a patient who visits the emergency room at one hospital will have all the information from that visit readily available at their physician’s office the next day, without any papers or files.

Currently, third-party software companies have provided care centers with different health information software, creating a web of networks that may work together, and may not. This causes some speed bumps, as issues between the programs need to be ironed out before the information can be shared, Murphy said.

“There are a lot of stakeholders in the healthcare industry,” Murphy said. “It takes a lot of coordination to streamline this new system.”

Megan Guido, director of marketing at PRH, said while the process of establishing these networks is slow-going, they will keep working with patients and staff to continually modernize their informatics systems.

“Our small size allows us to move flexibly, act quickly and continue to innovate,” said Guido, “larger hospitals just don’t have the time or staff to implement these things as efficiently.”

Meaningful Use requires that five percent of patients need to access the online patient portal, a feature of Meditech software that allows patients to look over all their medical information from their homes.

Amber Roberts, obstetrics specialist at PRH said most patients are excited to be able to see their prescriptions, allergies, and test results online.

“When you implement something like this, there is going to be a learning curve for everyone involved,” Roberts said. “We have experts who come in and explain everything to the patient, which makes the process easier.”

Roberts hopes that one day, a single software program will be used between any and all healthcare providers, making it fast and easy to send patient information anywhere.