CHI looks to incorporate EMR to help improve operation

Apr 10, 2011 News

By Sharmain Cornette

Five years after introducing an invaluable service to Guyana, the Caribbean Heart Institute (CHI) is gearing to further improve its operation. And according to Chief Executive Officer and founder of the facility, Dr Gary Stephens, this will not only include the upgrading of equipment such as those found within the Cardiac Cath Laboratory but also the introduction of new technologies, that can support Electronic Medical Records (EMR).
He revealed during an interview yesterday that plans are already apace to aid the improvement move.
“For this New Year we plan to get this done because we need to have a fully functional EMR, finally, so that we don’t have to deal with paper charts anymore. Upgrading our equipment and getting our EMR going together will be our next big project,” he asserted.
Over the next six months, he said, CHI’s capital expenditure will focus on achieving this objective. With the availability of the EMR technology, he noted that potential patients can easily make bookings and appointments on a computer or even with their blackberry as most EMRs have such capabilities.
The introduction of EMR, he said, is especially crucial in light of the diverse locations from which persons accessing CHI travel. “We have patients coming all the way from Corriverton and other distant areas…so if we can get these capabilities so that their physicians can access the system without them having to come all the way here, then life would be so much easier.”

Dr Gary Stephens

However, at the moment this technology is being restricted to some extent by the available internet service, Dr Stephens said.
He noted that since its commencement CHI has had to rely on a local server to retain its records but that with the EMR, medical records will not only be stored securely but can be accessed even overseas by those associated with CHI.
He added, too, that the likelihood of losing patients’ records will also be eliminated with this feature in place. “The big issue for us right now is the internet service. If we have a really good internet service then we can do virtual medical records so wherever you are you can go online and check it out …but you need a really good internet connection so that when you try to upload a page it downloads very quickly…Without this we would have to resort to our local server and that simply is not enough.”
EMR, according to Dr Stephens, “has to be the future. Life would be so much easier; records can be easily transportable; somebody can go to Canada and find that record and pull it up and email it. That is where we are heading; hopefully it works out well.”
Reducing the waiting list
And even as the improvement plans take shape, Dr Stephens said that CHI has been able to substantially reduce its waiting list.
Since its inception, the country’s lone cardiac facility has had an ever growing list of patients. Last week Dr Stephens, who was just last year named Chief Medical Officer of the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York, was able to spearhead nine surgical interventions, seven coronary heart bypass and two heart valve replacements at CHI. All of the patients, among them two Jehovah’s Witnesses, are recovering well.
The operations were supported by Dr Anastasia Kunac, Truama Surgeon of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of Newark, New Jersey. She had first rendered assistance to CHI in 2009 but according to her “in two years time the programme has come a long way.
“When I was here before the nursing staff for example needed a lot of help, there was an anesthesiologist coming to assist but now it is being done by Dr Alexandra Harvey alone.”
“The ICU nurses, for a good portion of (last) week, were on their own and things went extremely smoothly,” according to Dr Kunac. She is confident that CHI is poised for further improvement with the outstanding level of service already being offered.
CHI for the past few years has been offering a 24-hours service with the addition of Dr Pratik Soni, an Interventional Cardiologist who hails from India. That service, according to Dr Stephens, has been ongoing with much success.
However, he lamented that some persons are still not fully acquainted with the wide array of services offered by CHI and thus do not always look at the facility as a primary option.
Since undertaking the first open-heart operation in 2007, CHI has undertaken 438 coronary angiograms, 129 angioplasties and 60 open heart surgeries. “We get a lot of referrals from doctors but where people end up is usually their personal choice. I don’t think the general population once they can afford it would choose to come here first but after they come here for the first time they keep coming back.”

Dr Anastasia Kunac

According to Dr Stephens, “We have done a poor job letting people understand what we are about and what we are capable of.” This, he disclosed, is likely to be remedied with measures, such as advertisements, that are focused at raising awareness about CHI.