e-Health Savannah Project: Records upgrade tests docs

The following article recently appeared in the Savannah Morning News regarding electronic medical records systems recently installed in a free health clinic:

Volunteer Dr. Robert Proctor calls it the "kennel" where old dogs prove they can learn new tricks. Dr. Miriam Rittmeyer, executive director of the Community Health Mission, calls it the face of the future where electronic medical records replace paper for improved medical care for low-income and uninsured adults.

The computer-based system promises to streamline record keeping, reduce errors and enhance treatment of patients at the Eisenhower Drive site and at St. Mary's Community Center in Cuyler-Brownville. "The system is really beautiful," Rittmeyer said. "We are excited about it. It's going to make a difference."

The system went online June 9 - two weeks after St. Mary's went active - as staff and volunteer docs began the learning process.  It all began in July 2007 when Anita Nivens, associate professor of nursing and graduate nursing coordinator at Armstrong Atlantic State University, obtained a $1.4 million grant over five years to use the two clinics as partners.

A family nursing practitioner since 1980, Nivens said she saw first-hand the great needs of the uninsured and set out to help find solutions.  "What we do doesn't begin to scratch the surface," she said. But it is a great help, Rittmeyer said.

Because the clinics rely on Memorial University Medical Center and the St. Joseph's/Candler system respectively, the new program provides collaboration with the hospitals, Rittmeyer said. It will eventually link the two clinics with federally qualified centers at Curtis V. Cooper Primary Health Care and Union Mission's J.C. Lewis Health Center through the Chatham County's Safety Net Planning Council, Rittmeyer said.

By year's end, they will be connected to pharmacies.  And down the road, to emergency departments at the three local hospitals, Rittmeyer said.

The Community Health Mission is the combination of the Savannah Health Mission and the Community HealthCare Center providing primary health care for low-income and uninsured folk.  It found a kindred spirit in the Alliance for Chicago Community Health Services, a group of four inner-city sites serving the same basic groups.

And with it, the group's cutting-edge use of electronic medical records. With the program used by the Chicago group, doctors are able to view patient histories, medications, schedules, instructions and allergies on a screen with the click of the mouse.

For Proctor and many of a group of almost 100 doctors - including 18 retired physicians - who volunteer at the mission, the new system is a challenge.  Most are products of the hand-written charts and records being replaced by the new system.  Once they overcome the newness, they can see the benefit.

"I'm the old dog and this is the new trick," Proctor, 75, said as he fired up his computer program. "I'm seeing patients in two-thirds the time as I did last week."  An internal medicine specialist, Proctor practiced medicine for 50 years, most recently in emergency rooms across Georgia.  He has been at the mission since September and retired from paid medicine in November.  He volunteers on Tuesdays, and on Thursday's he works with another clinic on Gamble Road with a largely Hispanic population.

Ailments range from diabetes and hypertension to obesity and occasionally mental health issues.  Here, financial problems mix with medical issues.  "These people are under a lot of stress," he said. 

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