St. Anthony Regional Hospital

Automating Report Distribution from MEDITECH to Clinicians

St. Anthony Regional Hospital & Nursing Home, located in Carroll, IA, serves communities in West Central Iowa. Founded in 1905, the hospital is a 99-bed facility with a connected 79-bed nursing home. St. Anthony Regional Hospital has been designated as one of sixteen regional hospitals in Iowa by the Iowa State Department of Health.

Until April 2009, St. Anthony Regional Hospital used mainly manual methods to distribute reports from MEDITECH, its healthcare information system, to its affiliated doctors and clinics. Lab, radiology and pathology reports were printed onto paper and sent by mail or courier to the recipient, who then scanned the report into their computer and discarded the paper copy or incorporated it into the paper chart. This process consumed staff time at both the hospital and the recipient’s office, wasted paper, and delayed getting critical patient information to the clinicians who needed it.

“We wanted to find a faxing solution, so our IT Director started checking around,” said Dr. Jedd Hagen, a pathologist at St. Anthony Regional Hospital. “He had heard very good things about Interbit Data and NetDelivery, specifically its auto-faxing features.”

St. Anthony Regional Hospital’s IT Director made the decision to purchase NetDelivery along with the Distribution Wizard.

“NetDelivery has many features, allowing us to do more than just faxing,” reported Hagen. “It offers other delivery methods such as the NetDelivery client, which stores reports on a server at the hospital and allows people to retrieve reports through the Internet.”

Speeding Report Distribution to Multiple Recipients and Locations

St. Anthony Regional Hospital’s pathology department sends reports to approximately 50 doctors at 15 different clinics. Its laboratory sends reports to this same group of doctors plus nursing homes and additional doctors outside the hospital — between 80 to 100 doctors altogether. The hospital can also send the doctors any dictation it does for patient history and physicals, operative reports or emergency room visits.

“NetDelivery is straight-forward, Windows-based and very easy to use,” reported Hagen. “We got the software set up and we were up-to-speed on it in three days. After only six months, we forgot how much we’ve automated!”

With NetDelivery, reports coming over for a particular doctor are automatically sent. There is no need to tell NetDelivery what to do, as the software knows where a report needs to be sent and in what format the recipient prefers to retrieve it.

Reaping Incredible Time Savings with NetDelivery

Prior to implementing NetDelivery, St. Anthony Regional Hospital’s lab staff had to spend two hours per day printing, folding, sorting into piles and packaging lab test results (about 100 reports) for delivery to different doctors. The pathology department consumed one hour per day to distribute 30-40 reports. That is time that those departments now have during the day to attend to more important issues. Also, because of this freed-up time, the hospital was able to absorb the loss of a staff member and not add new personnel, yet still accomplish what they have always been able to do.

“NetDelivery has proven to be an incredible time-saver, specifically for the lab but radiology and medical records have also been able to save time with report distribution,” said Hagen. “Just my department (pathology) decreased the amount of reports we have to print and distribute by 80%; those reports are now sent electronically or by faxing with NetDelivery.”

With this kind of time savings, as well as the ability to alleviate personnel from performing a menial daily task, it’s easy to believe that St. Anthony Regional Hospital’s lab, pathology and other departments are ecstatic with NetDelivery.

“If we told the people in these departments that we were taking away NetDelivery, I’m not sure I’d get out of here alive,” joked Hagen.