SRS

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Sandhills Pediatrics is a 14-provider practice located in Columbia, South Carolina. Their providers have been offering comprehensive medical services to children from birth to college age since 1975.

Why SRS?

Enhanced Quality of Care Was the Driving Force

With the implementation of the SRS EHR, we uniformly organized all of our patient data from our 4 office locations. This has enabled us to be clinically informed and accurate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which results in the delivery of a higher level of patient care. The patients, especially those seen on weekends and evenings or in our satellite offices, have all noticed the transformation and appreciate the enhanced service we provide. When patients call in with questions or concerns, our staff accesses their patient information immediately in the SRS EHR and provides real-time answers. Our patients are comforted and are given peace of mind that their health is well-monitored.

We have also experienced tremendous improvements in patient outcomes as a direct result of using SRS Order Management, a module of the SRS EHR. For example, prior to implementing SRS, we manually tracked lab tests on paper—now with the SRS EHR, this process is fully automated. An expected date for test results pops up in SRS and if the tests are not back by that date, the provider is alerted that the lab order needs to be addressed. Once alerted, our practice can contact the necessary party(ies) to reconcile the lab test issue. SRS gives us the power to proactively resolve such matters and encourages us to make it a priority to keep our patients informed.

Taking the Lead in Health Information Exchange

Growth charts and immunization information are aspects unique to pediatrics and SRS has helped us in these areas in many different ways. The SRS development staff worked closely with our practice to redesign our growth charts to conform to the World Health Organization standards. In addition, the SRS EHR has enhanced our workflow by auto-populating patients’ growth charts with age, height, and weight information.

With vaccines, the benefits SRS has delivered are numerous. SRS created a vaccine inventory control table for displaying and storing vaccine lot numbers. This new format provides both quality and inventory control in our practice. Additionally, it’s particularly beneficial to us because providing vaccine lot numbers is a requirement for participation in a federal incentive program. SRS is securing the integration that will send the vaccine information from the SRS server directly to SCHIEX and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The immunization support and development that SRS has delivered have impacted our patients, our staff, and our bottom line. With a patient population of 57,000, we have to provide every kindergarten, grade school, and day care with proof of immunization. In the past, the staff had to hand-write 20,000 immunization certificates each year. SRS was readily available to provide a solution to this issue that saved our staff hours of time and aggravation—the SRS EHR auto-populates the immunization information on the South-Carolina-required form for school children, and the staff no longer needs to hand-write each certificate. The patients appreciate receiving immunization information in an understandable format, the nurses are so happy with the time savings that they are dancing around, and the ability to auto-populate patient immunization records has saved the practice the equivalent of a FTE nursing salary!

Maximizing Government Incentives with SRS

The SRS EHR is a certified EHR system, which gave our providers the option to pursue the government EHR incentives offered through the HITECH Act of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Sandhills’ providers successfully met the Medicaid meaningful use criteria and received a total of $184,000 in EHR incentives this year. Even though the process for obtaining the incentives was cumbersome, the SRS Government Affairs department provided us with expert guidance and support and we achieved this financial bonus successfully without negatively impacting our productivity and delivery of patient care.

Quality Partnership Results in Success

"Even though the final decision to implement the SRS EHR was made at the top, because the SRS EHR is a user-friendly system, practice-wide support and adoption was easily attained. SRS created workflow efficiencies that, coupled with the EHR’s uniqueness in allowing physicians to continue to document notes as they are accustomed, have led to a successful implementation and positive EHR experience for our entire practice. Clinical outcomes have improved and SRS made it possible for us to meet new quality-control standards. Our partnership with SRS has truly been a positive movement forward for Sandhills."

Kenneth L. Fenchel – Practice Administrator
Sandhills Pediatrics, Columbia, SC
Retired US Army Physicians Assistant

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