Firm Will Customize Solutions to Increase Efficiency for GBMC's Emergency and Internal Medicine Physicians
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May 26, 2009 –Salar, Inc., an electronic clinical document solutions provider, announced today that it has been chosen by the Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC) to enable electronic clinical documentation for the center’s emergency and internal medicine physician staff. Under the agreement, GBMC will take part in a nine month pilot implementation of customized versions of Salar’s TeamNotes™ and TAP Charge Capture™ solutions for use by an initial rollout of about 30 hospital physicians.
“We believe Salar can help expedite patient flow through the emergency department and allow our physicians to collaborate more effectively, both of which will enhance patient care,” said John Wogan, M.D., a GBMC emergency medicine physician.
TeamNotes is Salar’s clinical documentation tool that allows clinicians to create medical forms, such as daily patient notes, admission notes and discharge notes electronically on desktops, laptops and tablet-style computers, eliminating the use of paper and the need to transcribe information by hand. The solution will be modified to meet the specific needs of GBMC’s physicians, resulting in a faster and more efficient work process as well as more complete patient medical records and enhanced care team collaboration, and ultimately better patient care.
The TAP Charge Capture solution automates the capture of billable physician charges, eliminating the traditional paper-based and labor-intensive hospital billing process. With TAP Charge Capture, as a physician creates electronic notes during a patient encounter, billing codes are automatically extracted and sent to the billing department in real time, leading to more accurate billing cycles and optimizing hospital revenues.
Both solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with MEDITECH, GBMC’s existing electronic medical record (EMR) system.
“GBMC has a long history of providing high-quality medical care to the Baltimore community, and we are honored they have chosen our electronic documentation tools to enhance their already high performance standards,” said Todd Johnson, president, Salar, Inc. “Our team is looking forward to working closely with the GBMC physicians to determine the best way to make our solutions work for them. Our ultimate goal is to maximize the amount of time physicians spend interacting with and treating patients and minimize the time occupied with completing paperwork and correcting billing errors.”
"The key to successfully implementing electronic clinical documentation is achieving a high level of physician adoption, and we are confident that Salar's tools have the necessary flexibility and intuitiveness to be effective with our physicians," said Tressa Springmann, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, GBMC. "We are impressed with Salar's commitment to maintaining the efficiency of our physicians - insuring that creating notes electronically doesn't have to mean more work or be more challenging than their current hand-written and dictation processes. In fact, our goal is to create more efficient and accurate methods resulting in timely, clear documentation for our patients."
About Salar, Inc.
Salar, Inc. specializes in providing comprehensive electronic clinical documentation and charge capture solutions to the health care industry. Salar’s market-leading suite of products is designed to transform traditional physician paper-driven documentation into electronic format to boost clinical productivity, operational efficiency and care team collaboration. Each solution provides a highly customizable physician interface that integrates easily with existing Electronic Medical Record systems. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Baltimore, Salar provides solutions to many of the nation’s leading hospitals including: Johns Hopkins Hospital, UMass Memorial Health Care, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the George Washington University Hospital. For more information, please call 1-888-577-2527 or visit www.salarinc.com.
About GBMC
GBMC includes Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC), Central Maryland’s leading community hospital; Gilchrist Hospice Care, which provides comfort and care to patients with life-limiting illnesses; and the GBMC Foundation, which supports the GBMC mission by managing fundraising efforts. The 310-bed Medical Center, located on a beautiful suburban campus, serves nearly 22,000 inpatients annually and provides approximately 60,000 emergency room visits. For more information, go to www.gbmc.org.
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