Hospital Medicine Service clinicians say using hand-held charge capture software helped them speed care for patients they treated as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The caregivers worked double shifts at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, Baton Rouge, La., to care for an influx of patients in the 10 days following the hurricane.
The clinicians traditionally use the IMBILLS Web-based charge capture software from Ingenious Med Inc. on PDAs then print a check-out sheet for patients to take to the hospital's billing department before they are discharged. Because of the overflow of patients, the caregivers instead used the system to e-mail the check-out sheet to other physicians and the hospital's billing department.
The feature not only helped speed patient throughput but also improved communication between physicians, as the hospitalists often couldn't locate other physicians during the busy time, says Richard Slataper, M.D.
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