A joint hospital/vendor project brings CQI and point-of-care technology to home care.

A joint project team consisting of personnel from Parkview Episcopal Medical Center, Pueblo, Colorado, and Patient Care Technologies, Atlanta, Georgia, a software vendor, codeveloped a point-of-care based system of electronic patient records and administrative data capture for home health care. Well established continuous quality improvement techniques, in use at Parkview for approximately 6 years, guided the development project and the subsequent alpha and beta testing of the system. Significant results to date include an overall productivity gain approaching 20%, the potential to increase annual home care revenue $876,000 with the same staffing level, and an 83% reduction in billing errors. Although not directly measured as a part of the study, the project team believes the quality of charting has improved because it is now done at the point-of-care in the home rather than in the office--some period of time after care is delivered. Anticipated future development includes integration of the home care clinical record with the hospital's clinical data repository and explicit support of critical pathways.