Case Study: EMR Designed For ED Facilitates Productivity Improvement

Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, NJ, has faced an enormous challenge over the past decade as its emergency-department visits soared from 27,000 to over 70,000 per year. The community hospital, licensed for 450 beds, was forced to take on this load because four other local hospitals closed their doors in recent years. The recession has also raised the number of uninsured patients seeking emergency care. Yet the Clara Maass Emergency Department (ED) has taken it all in stride, handling the increased volume without commensurate staff growth or a facility expansion.

The key to this success, says John Fontanetta, MD, FACEP, chairman of the ED, has been an electronic medical record (EMR) that the Saint Barnabas Health Care System, based in nearby Livingston, had the foresight to install in Clara Maass' ED when Saint Barnabas took over the hospital 11-years ago. Besides greatly increasing the ED's productivity, the EMR has also enabled the ED to improve the quality of care it delivers. Today, Clara Maass sits near the top of HealthGrades' ranking of 80 New Jersey hospitals. Its ED, a certified center for stroke and chest pain, has one of the state's top quality scores for opening coronary arteries after acute myocardial infarction (MI).

AN EMR AHEAD OF ITS TIME
When Saint Barnabas acquired Clara Maass, the ED was experiencing all of the usual problems of a paper-based documentation system, Dr. Fontanetta recalls. With the electronic record, the hospital has been able to significantly improve quality and financial performance.

Waiting time was decreased significantly as were walk outs. The electronic record also captured charges more accurately improving corporate compliance.