SRS

Cardiac Specialists Demonstrates Patient Care Benefits of SRS

Cardiac Specialists is a high-performance, high-volume cardiovascular practice in Fairfield, Connecticut. We implemented the SRS EHR seven years ago, and as a result, we have benefited from decreased overhead costs and increased revenues. In addition to these significant financial benefits, we have also realized a valuable benefit that is not as easily quantified—SRS has enabled us to improve the quality of patient care.

Many of the patient-care improvements we continue to experience are tied directly to the SRS design and functionality, including:

• Enhanced communication speed
• Elimination of non-value-added and duplicative manual processes
• Facilitation of information transfer among offices
• Reduction in idle time—tasks that could not be completed because the physician was working at another facility now can be addressed.

Because Cardiac Specialists has multiple offices, it may be four or five days before a physician returns to a given office. Prior to implementing SRS, nonurgent patient issues were often not addressed until the physician returned to that office a few days later. As a result, a doctor would have innumerable results to review and phone calls to return at each office, while at the same time, the patients would understandably feel apprehensive while waiting for a response, even if the issue was not medically urgent.

SRS allows Cardiac Specialists to function as a single office. Digital medical records are available at any time to whoever needs them. Since implementing the SRS EHR, our physicians and staff can remotely access medical records throughout the day—from the office, at a hospital, at home, or even while on vacation.

Physicians are able to remotely manage higher volumes of messages and they can return calls quicker while having full electronic access to charts and labs.

The SRS EHR increases productivity, enabling physicians to communicate results faster. Consequently, they are able to provide care with real-time information. Patients benefit from having physicians who are in constant communication with them, and who are making decisions based on the patients’ full medical history and most recent results. Our patients praise our practice’s improved responsiveness, an improvement we attribute to our use of SRS.

An extremely valuable patient-care benefit derives from our use of the SRS electronic prescribing module. In addition to making our physicians more efficient, ePrescribing facilitates patient convenience and well-being. ePrescribing saves time for patients—they no longer have to drop off prescriptions at their pharmacy and wait for them to be filled. By using ePrescribing, most prescriptions are ready at the pharmacy when the patient arrives. Moreover, ePrescribing has eliminated the prescription errors that can result from misreading handwriting. Overall, ePrescribing has resulted in more satisfied patients, in terms of both convenience and safety.

Patients who take the drug Coumadin experience particularly valuable benefits of the SRS EHR. About 1,500 patients of Cardiac Specialists rely on the drug, which carries a very high risk and must be constantly titrated. Patients taking Coumadin undergo frequent blood tests and have their dosage instructions altered as necessary. Before SRS, our practice used thick binders of loose-leaf papers to manually track results. Now, our practice relies on a seamless interface between SRS and CoaguTrak to facilitate dosing and communication with patients. Providers are alerted when a patient’s results come in. The physician can compare the new results with previous ones and determine the new dose and next testing date. A message is then sent to a pool of nurses, instructing the message recipient to call the patient and advise him/her regarding the test results and any new dosing instructions.

Using SRS, the nurse or medical assistant maintains an electronic log of conversations with patients, which helps them follow up with patients whom they were unable to reach and to identify patients facing a potential risk of complications.

The automated nature of our current Coumadin management helps Cardiac Specialists provide the best possible care, a claim attested to by our patients. Upon returning from extended stays in other areas, patients report that management of their Coumadin regimen by Cardiac Specialists far surpasses the care they receive from other providers. Some of our patients even have a machine to test their own blood at home, the results of which are sent to us from a third-party company. The SRS EHR allows us manage our patients’ care remotely, and to keep detailed records of our conversations with these patients.

Practitioners and patients alike are delighted with the way that SRS has enhanced patient care, primarily through improved communication. Our patients are extremely satisfied with the responsiveness of their physicians as well as their overall care. Ultimately, the benefits we continue to gain from our use of the SRS EHR are widespread and span our entire practice.

 Back to Cardiology Case Studies

---

For more information, visit our SRS EHR page
or contact us.

Back to Top