Crossings Helps Billings Clinic With A New Interactive Tool
The Height/Weight/Allergy Advisor enhances patient safety by streamlining data entered in the electronic medical record (EMR).
When Billings Clinic in Billings, Montana, heard about Crossings’ Height/Weight/Allergy Advisor, they were interested in learning more. This new tool enables clinical staff to enter the patient’s height, weight and any allergies into the electronic medical record (EMR) prior to giving the patient their medication.
Nurse Informaticist Sally Hageman, RN, BSN says the clinic serves a wide variety of patients, including children. “If the height and weight are not entered correctly, patients may not be receiving the correct dosage of medication,” says Hageman. “This was one of the reasons we chose to add this tool to our system.”
The tool has built-in flags and advisories. “If someone enters the patient’s height in the weight section by accident, the tool will flag it and not let them continue entering. That enhances patient safety,” says Hageman.
Built-in safety feature
Adding the tool to their program was a significant change for the staff, says IPM Clinical Coordinator Amanda Haithcox, RN, BSN. “But once everyone got used it, they realized the advantage of it as a built-in safety feature,” says Haithcox.
The Height/Weight/Allergy Advisor has a 20 percent differential allowance for a person’s weight. So if a patient’s weight is incorrectly entered at more than 20 percent of the previous weigh-in, the record is flagged. Users can lower the differential based on their requirements.
“This tool has really made a difference in patient safety. It holds our staff to a higher level of accountability. We also love that we can work with Crossings to customize it to fit our needs at any time,” says Haithcox.