Broadlawns Medical Center

Phased Approach Brings HIT Success to Small and Rural

Being one of the Most Wired—Small and Rural organizations, Broadlawns Medical Center has a unique set of challenges. Its journey toward integrated health care delivery involved upgrading its facility and introducing new, cutting-edge technology to patients and staff with limited funding. By using a phased approach, Broadlawns developed a strong health information technology (HIT) infrastructure that has enabled the organization to adapt to the needs of multiple internal and external projects.

Beginning in 2004, Broadlawns began to prepare its infrastructure to support the expanding technology by updating its network equipment and wiring in phases. With more information becoming available online, the organization viewed this process as necessary to have adequate speeds for access to the information.

Once the foundation was in place, Broadlawns began another phased approach to implementing its electronic medical records (EMR) system. “We decided to use a phased approach with the implementation rather than all applications at once,” explained Kyle Hansen, IT director at Broadlawns. “This approach has worked out very well for our organization because we were able to ensure we met the needs of the different areas while making the transition.”

The phased approach has enabled Broadlawns to overcome the challenges of being small and rural, as today the organization is gearing up to achieve HiMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) level 7 certification, joining the ranks of roughly 1 percent of hospitals across the nation in having a truly paperless organization. “We enjoy participating with the different standards organizations to ensure we are following industry best practices,” Hansen said. “We feel it prepares us to continue to adapt to any new rules or regulations that may come into effect.”

While being recognized among the nation’s top hospitals is a significant achievement, success truly lies in Broadlawns’ ability to provide better patient care. “We leverage data that is captured with the electronic records to continue to refine certain processes throughout the organization,” Hansen explained. “We were able to reduce the amount of time it took to admit a patient from the emergency room to an inpatient area by nearly 40 minutes by evaluating the length of time each step in the process took. It is much easier to identify these gaps when capturing the information electronically.” In addition to efficiency, Broadlawns is also developing safer patient practices through its EMR system. “Since we began utilizing bedside medication verification, we also track the utilization by nursing staff to ensure this patient safety tool is used whenever possible,” Hansen said.

In 2010, Broadlawns began to address integration across organizations. A certain population of Broadlawns’ patients are enrolled in a state program called Iowa Cares. These patients receive their primary care services at Broadlawns and specialty care at the University of Iowa. Using the foundation of its strong EMR system, Broadlawns worked with the University of Iowa to configure both organizations’ EMR systems to share certain pieces of patients’ records with patient consent. “Clinical care documents are imported into Broadlawns’ EMR once patient documents are completed by the specialty provider from the University of Iowa,” explained Hansen. “We plan to expand this project in the near future to imaging studies and other clinical information used to care for our patients.”

Broadlawns also stays involved in the state health care information exchange committees to be prepared for any state or federal initiatives.

“We are striving to continue to expand primary care and some of our best-of-breed services, such as podiatry, for patients,” Hansen said. “We want to continue to help patients establish a medical home with our providers, which will help us manage their care and deliver preventive services.” To do so, Hansen notes, Broadlawns will continue to expand on its use of technology as much as possible to meet patient needs.

For more information about Broadlawns Medical Center’s HIT innovations, please contact:

Kyle Hansen
IT Director
Broadlawns Medical Center
[email protected]  
(515) 282-2586