ELIZABETHTOWN — Essex County's visiting nurses may soon be issued tablet computers to replace their pens and note pads.
County Public Health Director Karen Levison has preliminary approval to buy 15 of the units for $20,000.
The nurses with the county's Home Care Agency, a part of the County Public Health Department, would carry the tablets to use for electronic medical documentation. The county would contract with remote data-collection provider Sansio to provide software for mobile medical documentation.
"We feel we must move into that system," Levinson said. "Nurses are going out and filling in numerous papers by hand. They come back, and those must be typed into computers."
It often takes weeks to complete documentation that way, she said.
MORE EFFICIENT
The visiting nurses are on the road daily, caring for patients in their homes, and county officials say the tablets will enable each nurse to make one or two extra home visits a day.
Duluth, Minn.-based Sansio will charge $250 a month to use its Web-based software, plus a $1,150 setup fee. Levison said her department's budgeted recruitment-retention funds can be used to pay for the tablets and software. The county would either go to bid for the ruggedized touch-screen electronic tablets or use state contract prices.
"They (nurses) are spending so much time doing documentation, when they'd much rather be out with their patients," Levison said.
Supervisor David Blades (R-Lewis) supports getting the tablets for the nurses.
"This will get staff out of the office and into the field where they belong."
The tablet computers came out of discussion on how to make the Public Health Department more efficient, said Board of Supervisors Chair Randy Douglas (D-Jay).
BETTER SYSTEMS
This idea isn't a new one.
In 2001, County Manager Daniel Palmer said, the nurses were given laptop computers to be used to transmit medical data, but that program failed.
"The laptop computers out in the field depended on dial-up (modem) service. The dial-up connection would break, become lost. Now there is enough (Internet) broadband service available that it can be uploaded directly to the county without those problems."
The old laptops often took up to two hours to send files back to county servers using a telephone line connection. The screen hinges also broke, and the DOS-based program was difficult to use, nurses said at the time.
Palmer said the county would probably have to upgrade the computer network switch equipment at Public Health, at a cost of about $15,000, to handle the traffic from the tablet computers.
The County Board of Supervisors will take another preliminary vote on the computers at Monday's Ways and Means meeting, with a final vote April 4.
Email Lohr McKinstry at: lmckinstry@pressrepublican.com
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