Embracing the New at Hospital General Castañer

Hospitals are necessarily complex places, with many departments, lots of personnel, and multiple demands on the time of physicians, staff, and administrators. And while every hospital wants to put the needs of patients first, the truth is that — without the right systems in place — it can be surprisingly easy to lose track of patients, both physically and administratively.

For Hospital General Castañer, the largest healthcare facility in central Puerto Rico, the time had come for a new emergency room Electronic Health Record.

The hospital turned to eClinicalWorks for help.

“The eClinicalWorks emergency room EHR solution has successfully helped us save significant time, streamline our documentation and workflows, and reduce patient wait times,” said Giovanni Ortiz-Pagán, who was named the hospital’s new CEO earlier this year.

Together, eClinicalWorks and Hospital General Castañer developed and implemented an innovative EHR designed specifically for emergency room management, with real-time tracking of patients at every step of their engagement with the system.

Why Tracking Patients Matters

A 2022 Health Policy meta-study of “throughput barriers” in hospital care identified a variety of factors that lead to patients becoming stuck in a hospital system. The study identified shortcomings in healthcare IT as one of the factors that can lead to inefficient and ineffective care for patients and loss of productivity for the hospital.

How the eClinicalWorks ER EHR Is Helping

Hospital General Castañer’s decision to work with eClinicalWorks is helping them better serve the more than 15,000 patients who use their emergency room annually. With the new ER solution, the hospital can provide efficient and 24/7 critical acute care to patients throughout central Puerto Rico.

“Previously, we used ambulatory solutions that weren’t fully designed for ER workflow management,” said Ortiz-Pagán. “We collaborated closely with eClinicalWorks to develop an ER solution that would boost our efficiency. The real-time patient tracker is our favorite tool; it offers an intuitive view of all patients. All these features help us streamline operations, boost staff satisfaction, and improve patient outcomes.”

Key Features of the ER EHR Solution

The eClinicalWorks emergency room EHR solution offers:

• Real-time, intuitive tracking of patients from triage to discharge.
• A comprehensive admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) tool.
• The medical administration and reconciliation solution, integrated with leading devices, lets users build their own formularies.
• Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) manages medications, labs, and radiology.
• Interdisciplinary tools manage orders, worklists, and clinical charting across disciplines.
• A bed management tool across the ER department.
• A customizable discharge summary checklist across multiple disciplines.
• A real-time interactive analytics dashboard with key performance indicators.

Founded in 1943, Hospital General Castañer, with 250 employees and 35 providers, is the largest healthcare facility in Central Puerto Rico. The facility offers 24/7 healthcare services, including mental health services, family medicine, pediatrics, obesity, OB/GYN, optometry, dental care, chiropractic, nutrition, wellness, and more. Learn more at hgcastaner.com.