SU upgrades its health records

Hurricane Katrina didn’t do many good things for Louisiana. But it inspired Southern Univ-ersity to bring its health care into the 21st century.
Since June, Southern has been using electronic medical records for students who seek treatment at the Student Health Center. Officials express confidence that the move will not only improve treatment for students but also help create a healthier campus.
Southern University began looking into EMR after Katrina’s destruction in Louisiana in-cluded significant numbers of medical records.
A study by the professional services firm Pricewaterhouse-Coopers put Louisiana at the bottom nationally for its use of electronic medical records, said Janet Rami, dean of Southern’s School of Nursing.
The system’s advantages don’t end with keeping records that can survive wind and rain.
EMR assures the Student Health Center’s record-keeping will be more thorough because the system requires certain information to be entered on each patient visit, Rami said. Having complete records in an electronic database has numerous advantages.
One of the most direct advantages for students is that, should they become sick or injured off campus and seek medical treatment, their doctors can get their medical records sent to them electronically, said Shirley Wade, clinical director of SU Student Health Center.
The records remain secure, since they cannot be accessed online, and medical personnel have to call the Health Center to get records transmitted, Wade said.
The system also will allow Southern to better monitor and deal with health issues on a larger scale.
“When we see the students, we get demographics. You see which dorm they stay in,” Wade said. “If we see a lot of staph infections or insect bites, we may have to notify that dorm: ‘We’ve seen 10 students this week with bedbugs or spider bites. You may need to assess that and spray and take some other type of precaution.’
“That’s a way you can zero in on where you have areas that may need further investigation or something done to alleviate that problem. Let’s say you have a breakout of meningitis. We have to find out where that student is and see about other students in the dorm. If we get a lot of people with headaches, let’s see if we’ve got something going on here.”
Southern chose software by Foxmeadows after consulting with local physicians who use EMR and deciding this system was the easiest to use and provided the most information, Rami said.
The software normally would cost $200,000, but as a state agency and because of the smaller number of expected users, Southern was able to get it for $40,000, Rami said.