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Transcript: Innovation - EMRs in Action at Collier Health Services

1. EMRs in Action at Collier Health Services

   Dr. Jerry Williamson:

   We are in Goldengate Maples, in our Goldengate pediatric office. This is one of 10 offices that Collier Health Services has and this has just been another marvelous, marvelous feature for the electronic health record for us. By having the 10 offices and having implemented the electronic record in these 10 offices, we can now see patients in any of the offices, just by bringing up their chart on the electronic record. Previously, that was not possible.

2. Dr. George Camina:

   TCollier Health Services is basically a not-for-profit organization. It started out as a corporation in Immokalee; the main hub is still there, and we've been able to branch out here in Naples, and that's kind of our mission. Our mission is to provide care for families with lower income.

3. Dr. Jerry Williamson:

   Community health centers are safety nets for disadvantaged patients, and there are many of them, well over 1,000 in the United States.

4. Dr. George Camina:

   Our patient population, for the most part, migrant farm workers, lower income working class. We see a high percentage of Medicaid or uninsured patients, and we try to provide as much service for them as possible. It is a little bit challenging because there's a language barrier. Not a lot of them speak English. We have a lot of Haitian patients, a lot of Hispanic patients, so in that aspect it is a challenging office, but Naples is not the biggest city in the world, but our patient population is quite vast.

5. Dr. Jose Gonzales:

   Our electronic medical records is basically chart but without paper, so everything is right here, right in the computer, so as soon as I walk into the room, I can log on, and everything is in there that you need, immunization records. You can do your growth charts right on there. You can go back and look at previous visits. You can look at the past medical history.

6. Gabriela Guzman:

   The waste that goes into using paper is unbelievable, especially for little notes and things like that. Why, if it could be in this much storage and out in a file, why would it be in volumes and volumes in a paper chart?

7. Dr. George Camina:

   This not only forces us as physicians to keep up technologically, it involves the patient. I bring the patient to the screen. I show them the screen. I show them their growth chart, and I can show them trends and explain to them their diagnoses.

8. Dr, Jose Gonzales:

   We're also now ordering prescriptions right through here, for which the patients love, because we send them directly to the pharmacy. Most of the time the prescriptions are ready for them already when they get there.

9. Dr. George Camina:

   The biggest improvement for me has with medications. In that aspect, it has really made me a true better physician, because you very easily can get drug interactions, lack of dosage errors.

10. Dr. Jerry Williamson:

    The transition from paper to electronics is a very interesting transition. It's a transition that I would liken to going from the Model T Ford into a rocket ship. The future is here, and we are very much a part of it.

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