One hundred percent of Carle Clinic physicians, clinical staff and departments are now using a new Electronic Medical Records (EMR) program. Current and past patients of Carle Clinic could benefit. Under the new system, doctors have immediate electronic access to medical information. This can help determine a patient’s past treatments and medications to clarify if that person might have an allergy, or if a newly prescribed drug might interact with a medicine prescribed earlier.

“We’ve put in a tremendous number of training hours. Tech staff taught each clinician how to use the system on the floors. We trained a department a week to be certain that everyone understands how to use EMR most efficiently,” explained John Stoll, MD, Medical Director, Carle Clinic Association.

2900 employees are trained on Carle Clinic’s EMR system. Physicians use electronic tablets in patient care rooms instead of paper files. This eliminates the need for a great deal of storage space in each department. Once paper files are scanned into the system, those documents are stored to be shredded and destroyed at a later date.

“We’ve learned that in case of disaster, having an electronic record of a patient’s history and current profile is much safer.  Electronic records don’t burn, or become saturated in a flood,” said Michael Sutter, Carle Clinic Director of Clinical Systems IT. 

“We’ve gone to great lengths to protect patients’ privacy as well,” Sutter explains further. “Even if a hacker could get into our system, there are many layers of security and everything is password protected. Electronic Medical Records will help patients get more efficient medical care, and better protection for their personal health information.”

In less than three years, Carle Clinic has installed EMR software, trained clinical staff, and implemented the entire electronic medical records system in all locations, including the 10 regional clinics. Also in that time, 10 years of lab data, eight years of radiology images, and eight years of dictated notes were included in the records.  At some point, patients will also be able to access their own personal medical records.

“EMR implementation will also allow doctors to monitor their patients’ progress. The Health Care Summary allows the physician to quickly see if an immunization or preventative test is due. The EMR can help our patients maintain a healthier life,” added Dr. Stoll.

Only about 15 percent of physicians and clinics in the nation operate using electronic records as the sole record keeping tool.