ValleyLink, The Electronic Medical Record System of Cape ...



ValleyLink, The Electronic Medical Record System of Cape Fear Valley Hospital

Mary Catherine Pilkington

Methodist University

Author Note

The EMR System researched and evaluated in this paper is the system that Cape Fear Valley

Medical Center uses, which is ValleyLink. This paper will discuss the strengths and weaknesses

of ValleyLink using the class text book, Health Informatics: A Systems Perspective as a guide.

The end of the paper will conclude with why or why not the EMR System is one that would be

an asset to an organization.

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Valley Link is the Electronic Medical Record System that Cape Fear Valley Health Systems uses to chart information on each patient and perform other tasks needed while the patient is in the hospital. It is used hospital wide, although some units decide not to use only this system. Different departments are able to access information on a single patient just by logging into the system with their assigned username and password. Cape Fear moved from paper charting to computer charting many years ago, but they have just recently converted to the ValleyLink system. All employees are required to take a class that is two days long and is taught by the hospital education department in order to learn how to use the system. The layout of the system is quite simple. It provides alerts and reminders as well as has a place to order tests and procedures for the providers. It is very convenient for accessibility for each unit, because you can easily choose which unit you are on, and it gives you the census for that particular unit instead of having to pick and choose from every patient in the hospital. One way that the system assists clinicians to make care safer, more efficient, and more cost effective is by displaying health maintenance reminders, drug-drug interaction checking, and dose adjustment. It easily converts from one unit of measurement to another. For example for dosing medicine, it can easily convert from grams to milligrams if it makes dosing it out easier. In addition, in Labor and Delivery, for example, if you type a weight in grams, it can convert it to pounds.

In addition to ValleyLink, there is a system within the system called DigiChart. DigiChart would be qualified as a Health Information Exchange because it is “the sharing of EMR data between institutions and clinicians involved in a patient’s care” (Brown, Patrick, and Pasupathy, 2013, p. 163.). DigiChart, in particular, is a way that departments in the hospital can access patient’s records from doctors’ offices. For example, in the Labor and Delivery

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department, when a patient is admitted to the hospital and comes to the Labor and Delivery unit, the health care workers can pull up DigiChart, search for the patient by name and date of birth. If the patient has been seen by a doctor who has their charts linked to DigiChart, they can print off their information, making it easier to care for the patient. The security that is involved with this system is having the correct username and password that the doctor’s office requires you to have to access their charts. Nurses that were questioned as to how they like the DigiChart system in particular have said that by having DigiChart, it makes the admission process of the patient run a lot smoother. In Labor and Delivery, it is important to know how many pregnancies, children, births, what type of births, etc. the patient has had in the past. If their doctor’s office has their files linked with DigiChart, the nurse can type in the patients name and date of birth and can print out their information, and then plug it into their charting in ValleyLink, making the process so smooth. This benefits both the patient and the health care team because it lessens the time and amount of questions the nurse has to ask initially about the patient’s history and gives them more time to concentrate on the reason they are at the hospital at the present time.

Nurses that were interviewed have mixed opinions on the ValleyLink electronic medical record system. The nurses that have worked at the hospital for a while and were accustomed to the system they used prior were not as fond of ValleyLink. The reason was mainly because they were so familiar with where to chart patient information in the old system, that learning a new one was very complicated. It is always hard to change from something that you feel works and are used to, so their experiences with the system were not very positive. From the nurses who were hired after the switch, the response was much more positive and accepting towards the system. They seem to love it and find it very simple to use, mainly because they came into their

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job and that is what they learned from the beginning and they didn’t have to switch from one system to a different one.

When it comes to the technicality of the system, if there are problems with it or the system messes up, there is a number that anyone at the hospital can come at any hour of the day to get in touch with an IT professional. According to those that have used this number for help when something in the system doesn’t work correctly, the IT professionals have always been very helpful with either talking the person through how to fix the problem or actually coming to help. When it comes to updates or modifications to the system, there are certain times during the year that the system undergoes a down-time when updates and modifications can be made at a time that everyone is aware of and can plan for. The IT and system operators try to make this time go as smoothly as possible and try to plan it during a time that the system is not used at the highest volume so that it is not as much of an inconvenience for everyone using it. Of course, it is going to cause some health care providers to not be able to chart what they need to chart for that period of time, but there are back up plans in place that can be used for the time being until ValleyLink is back up and running.

As for me, I would accept ValleyLink for my organization. I have been working at Cape Fear Valley Hospital this summer so I have had first-hand experience with the system and that is one of the reasons I would accept the system. Although I have not had the opportunity to get in and chart things, I have watched nurses very closely and it seems like a system that can be learned very quickly, especially because I have not had to use another system yet so I am not confused or partial to any other system. There are certain aspects that I would not favor, such as

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there is some redundancy in the system when it comes to charting. There are some places where it seems like you are charting the same thing twice, but other than that, I would have no complaints. Once a doctor has given orders, ValleyLink makes it very easy to go in and order any labs or tests that may be included in the orders, and this makes for a very fast turn around in getting them completed. I believe that ValleyLink and DigiChart make for a great electronic medical record system and I would support it at any organization.

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References

Brown, Gordon D., Patrick, Timothy B., & Pasupathy, Kalyan S. (2013). Health

Informatics: A Systems Perspective. Chicago, Illinois: Health Administration Press.

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