Move to digital medical files is expected to reduce errors, increase patient privacy

NORFOLK

Picture your medical history. File folders stuffed with paper, multiplied by the number of doctors you have and your trips to the hospital.

Drive by Sentara Leigh Hospital early Sunday and you may detect the scent of those file folders burning.

OK, not really. But they might as well be, as the region's largest health provider takes its next big step in implementing a

$237 million electronic medical records system that, if all goes as planned, will ultimately make paper folders obsolete.

On Sunday morning, Leigh will be the first hospital to "go live" on Sentara's

eCare Health Network, which will eventually link all the health system's hospitals and physician practices with one another. Last summer, Sentara began hooking up the roughly 50 physicians now using the system.

"Wherever the patient goes, the information will follow them there," said Dr. David Levin, a senior medical director at Sentara and one of the leaders of its eCare initiative. With paper folders, "you never would have had all this information instantly at your fingertips. Now it's there right away."

Concerned about expenses and privacy issues, the health care industry has been slow to implement electronic medical records. Only about 10 percent of physicians reported using comprehensive systems in 2005, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many health systems have taken an incremental approach by wiring certain priority hospital departments. For example, all health systems in Hampton Roads report having wired emergency departments.

Although Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News has such a system in place, Leigh will be the first hospital in South Hampton Roads with an electronic medical records program connected with physician practices. Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System is scheduled to have such a system in place in 2009, and Chesapeake Regional Medical Center is aiming toward that goal as well.

After Leigh, Sentara's Bayside and Virginia Beach General hospitals will go live on the eCare system in the fall. Next year, Sentara's Norfolk General and Careplex hospitals, along with Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, will join them. Sentara Obici will follow after that. The health system also will hook up about 300 more physicians in Sentara Medical Group as well.

Another component of the system that will start in April will allow patients to check their records and lab results and make appointments online.

On Sunday, if a patient of a doctor who is hooked up to Sentara's eCare system is admitted to Leigh, the health care professionals there will have access to those records, as well as from Sentara's emergency departments. The system has alerts for such things as when a patient is allergic to medicines or is being given a drug different from the one prescribed.

"It's an electronic safety net that's put underneath the caregivers," said Bert Reese, Sentara's vice president of information technology.

Reese said the system was designed with extensive input from nurses and doctors to be user-friendly, and its security features are regularly tested. Sentara has hired several Department of Defense contractors "whose job it is to hack us," he said.

Levin said that patient privacy will be even better protected than with paper files. The system records whenever a patient's file is opened. If someone suspicious has logged in, it is investigated. Health care professionals have their own security level clearances. A receptionist would not be able to see as much information as a nurse.

Levin said health insurance companies would not have access to the system. No more information would be shared than is needed for coverage and billing purposes.

The system also solves one of the age-old problems of medicine: the illegible scribble of doctors.

"It leads to lots and lots of medical errors," Levin said. But with the new system, treatment orders and drug prescriptions will be typed. "The bad handwriting essentially goes away."

Nancy Young, (757) 446-2947, nancy.young@pilotonline.com.