Four Winds Hospitals are located on two serene campuses in New York State. Four Winds Katonah, a 175 bed psychiatric hospital 50 minutes north of midtown Manhattan and Four Winds Saratoga, an 88 bed psychiatric hospital located in Saratoga Springs, 30 minutes north of Albany. Four Winds has become leading specialized providers of inpatient psychiatric treatment for children, adolescents and adults in the northeast.
For Four Winds, the EMR (electronic medical record) aims to provide additional value to patients of Four Winds by increasing safety and security, improving quality, accelerating excellence in operations, as well as generally improving access with immediate availability of vital patient information.
With this quantum leap in technology, a solution was needed to ensure continuity with existing paper patient records. Four Winds Saratoga decided to work with Image Data for imaging services to make this transition from hard copy to digital happen.
According to Michelle Blanchard, RHIA, who is Director, Health Information at Four Winds, “Four Winds Saratoga contracted with Image Data converting historical patient records to images which were then transferred to our electronic medical record. This included over 600 patient files and approx. 105,000 scanned images.”
Image Data’s responsive approach to this project and proven experience with similar healthcare customers yielded expedient progress and instant access to important patient records that provide continuity of access to older patient information even as new, state of the art systems are put in place.
Blanchard adds, “The Image Data team did an amazing job maintaining organization of the records while transporting, preparing and scanning the records. The quality of the images far surpassed our expectations as did the speed at which the team finished the project. The overall experience was unsullied and we would highly recommend Image Data services to other organizations seeking imaging services.”
It is the philosophy of Four Winds that “quality treatment, delivered at the appropriate level of care, is not only clinically effective, but cost effective.” In truth, all healthcare IT solutions need to meet that same dual objective of clinical and cost effectiveness. By migrating existing patient records into an enduring electronic format, coupled with easy access for clinicians, hospitals like Four Winds can increase clinician satisfaction; remove barriers to adoption of a new EMR; increase safety by ensuring no patient history information is missed; and significantly improve operational excellence with standardized and coordinated processes.
Many hospitals are facing this exact same challenge. They’ve made a commitment to implement an EMR/EHR and it can often be a complex, multi-million dollar investment with a protracted implementation. All the while, the disconcerting issue remains of what to do with paper patient records or even electronic records that exist in older formats from “home grown” or obsolete patient record systems. From a best practices perspective, it is critical for HCIT and clinical informatics leaders to partner with a firm that specializes in healthcare patient record migrations. Image Data’s strengths in engagement and project management, production planning and process control, and attention to data security can make the difference for a headache-free patient archive migration project associated with an EMR/EHR implementation.
Talk to Image Data today. We’re experts at evaluating your hospital’s unique challenges and providing a solution tailored to your requirements. Join our many clients in healthcare who work with Image Data to implement solutions that positively impact patient care.
