Digital patient records help save lives following tornado

There are a number of different benefits that organizations have been able to reap by adopting a paperless office. While saving space and money could be reasons enough to implement the system, if the solution can help save people lives, why are you waiting?

John Meharg, the director of health information technology at Norman Regional Health System, was interviewed by the AARP about one of the hospitals that uses their electronic medical record system, the Moore Medical Center in Oklahoma. When a massive tornado hit the area last week, 300 people hunkered down in the hospital for safety. The hospital was completely destroyed, but no one was hurt.

Hundreds of patients needed to be transferred to new facilities and because of the digital records, the move was seamless. Had the facility not adopted EHRs early on, this would have been a much different outcome.

"The first thing we would have had to do was find their records. And with all of the hustle and bustle of a disaster, they can easily get lost," Meharg said. He added that for the records that would be left behind "if the tornado doesn't get them, the subsequent rain would ruin them. The roof's gone, the walls are gone, and the windows are gone."

One of the first steps to going paperless is to partner with a document scanning and management service provide to convert existing files into a digital format. This will make sure that in the aftermath of a disaster, important records will not be lost.

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