Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Waiting in line at Watkins Memorial Health Center will be a thing of the past when the installation of a new electronic health record system is complete.
The system, Point and Click Solutions, will help make the appointment process quicker for both students and staff at Watkins.
While the transition from the current paper system to an electronic one will be slow, Joe Gillespie, associate director of student health services, said he hoped to see the program fully functional within a year.
Lannie Hubbel, administrative associate at Watkins Memorial Health Center, performs a check-in Aug. 26. The health center has started using an electronic health system for doctors, nurses and admistrators that simplifies its patient database, according to Mai Do, marketing coordinator for Watkins.. "It took a year and a half for a committee to pick one electronic system to use," Do said.
One goal of the new system will be to provide a Web portal element through the Kyou portal. The portal will allow new options for students seeking medical care: Students will be able to make appointments online, request prescription refills, view bills, communicate with doctors and receive lab results on the secure network.
Student Health Services will also be able to send appointment reminders to students online.
“Students have busy schedules,” Gillespie said. “You’re writing papers at 1 or 2 in the morning. We can see how you could space out on an appointment.”
Gillespie said there were about 2,600 missed appointments at Watkins each year and that each missed appointment comes with a $15 fee. That amounts to nearly $40,000 collected from students each year just for missed appointments. Gillespie said he hoped the system would help reduce that number, because every missed appointment meant someone wasn’t getting help.
Eventually, a self-check-in kiosk for students will allow students to skip waiting in line. Instead of checking in at the front desk, students would swipe their KUIDs and go directly to the waiting area. This would have helped Chris Porto, Lawrence non-degree seeking student, last week. Porto was stuck in a two-person line for more than 10 minutes. He said he was skeptical about the benefits of the new system.
“I think it will really depend on how well it works,” Porto said. “It would definitely save me this hassle. I guess I’ll know when I try it.”
The system would notify doctors when students were ready for their appointments and automatically match students with their health records. Gillespie said the check-in process would speed up the entire process.
Patricia Denning, senior student health physician at Watkins, is one of several doctors currently using the new systems. She said there had already been more appointments than usual for the beginning of the school year. Denning said the increase, along with the transition between the old and new system, was keeping the staff busy.
Gillespie said that people weren’t always willing to change the way they do things, but with the new system that was not the case.
“The staff is actually excited about this,” Gillespie said. “Everyone here is ready for a change.”
— — Edited by Becka Cremer
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