Cases in Redesign, II UPMC Health System: Transforming Care Through Clinical Documentation

Abstract

The healthcare industry currently faces the serious challenge of needing to transform the delivery of care to be able to continue providing quality care. One of the key issues confronting the major players in today’s healthcare environment is the increasing shortage not only of nursing staff but also in radiology, pharmacy, and other direct patient care providers. Several solutions come to mind to cope with this dilemma: one is to increase the supply of patient care providers, another is to decrease the demand for those services. The latter is not the most advantageous option as it implies that we would be decreasing the quality of care (or access to health care). If we cannot effectively increase the supply of care providers, or decrease the demand of services by patients, then we need to look for solutions in the process of the work that we do and in the way in which we provide care.

Automated clinical documentation represents a major milestone for UPMC in its drive to improve the quality of care and achieve an integrated electronic health record.