Application Service Provider Sep 2nd, 2009

Posted: Sept. 2, 2009
Advance for Health Information Executives

Lubbock Heart Hospital finds a good alternative to the EHR

In 2007, Lubbock Heart Hospital, a new hospital in Lubbock, Texas, had a big problem. Success had filled the file room in just two years.

With no electronic health care system on the horizon, Christi Rister, HIM director, feared the hospital would have to find an off-site storage facility. The idea of staff wasting time pulling records 15 times a day from storage was frustrating and the technology did not fit the modern hospital's image.

Ken Karriker of EDCO, The Document People, proposed several ways to handle the records. Rister picked the application service provider (ASP) solution, which she felt was state-of-the-art and allowed her FTEs to be the most productive. The IT department also pushed for the ASP because it reduced their workload.

Setting vendor criteria

The ASP decision did have its caveats. Lubbock Heart put forth key criteria that included:

• security and HIPAA compliance and control;
• readability of scanned images -- even on EKG and pulmonary function tests;
• ability to view all of a patient's activities then make a selection;
• intuitive software requiring no learning curve;
• control over who is allowed access;
• 24-hour access with chart retrieval while scanning records;
• paper storage as a safety net; and
• speed in converting -- the ability to scan quickly and upload to ASP.

"We looked at other vendors, but EDCO met all of the points we listed," said Rister. "IT put EDCO's software and network security to the test and couldn't find one fault." 

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