Stimulus Dollars to Help Medical Facilities Go Paperless

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma medical facilities are getting stimulus funds to help them go paperless.

Vice President Joe Biden recently announced $1.2 billion in stimulus grants to make the switch. However several Oklahoma facilites have already made the change.

INTEGRIS Baptist nurse Joyce Clytus said the mini computer she carrys makes a big difference in her job.

"It helps you keep up with scheduling meds, getting it on time, has a lot of safeguards to help with keeping up with correct medication and correct dosage," Clytus said.

And up front, few papers are actually being marked on. Instead they're getting scanned too, said Vice President of INTEGRIS Hospital, John Delano said.

"We've started taking forms nurses typically fill out paper-wise and are converting them to the electronic form," Vice President of INTEGRIS Hospital, John Delano said.

While facilities like INTEGRIS are making the transition, newer facilites like the 7-year-old Oklahoma Heart Hospital was built to be paperless.

"We were the first all-digital hospital in the nation and continue to lead in that area," Steve Miller with the Oklahoma Heart Hospital said.

Procedures are documented in the computer. The information goes straight to the patient's chart, so it can be accessed in a multitude of ways from a smart phones, reception desks, and terminals in each room.

"I can get to really any patient information, lab information, imaging information, all from this one central terminal and it's really the same everywhere else in the hospital," Miller said. This is really what the government is wanting, better efficiency and in the end better outcomes for patients. That's what we've been able to achieve here at Oklahoma Heart."

It's what the Obama administration hopes more medical facilities will look like. The latest grants will help rural physicians and clinics that could never come up with the funds alone, but the big hospitals that have already invested millions in making the switch aren't getting left out.

"If they meet certain requirements for meaningful use of electronic health records they can get some pretty substantial payments in the future," Rick Snyder with the Oklahoma Hospital Association said.

Security is obviously one of the biggest issues and one reason why the switch is so expensive. Both hospitals have major safeguards in place.

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