Saint Michael's Medical Center Saves Big With eForms

To operate, hospitals require many physical objects — beds, medical instruments, medications and equipment, among others. One type of object perhaps not as often associated with hospitals, but vital to their operation nonetheless, has been paper. Lots of paper. Hospitals such as Saint Michael’s Medical Center generate mountains of paper, or at least they have, until recently.

Saint Michael’s is a 357-bed hospital in the heart of Newark, New Jersey. Opened in 1867 by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, the hospital has been at its current site since 1871. A beloved Newark institution, it provides tertiary care, while functioning as a teaching hospital and research center. Known as an innovator, it was the first medical institution in New Jersey to perform open-heart surgery and the first to develop a cardiac catheterization program. Today, it is a major teaching affiliate of the Seton Hall University School of Graduate Medical Education, the New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Saint George’s University School of Medicine.

THE BENEFITS OF eFORMS
Saint Michael’s Medical Center has realized numerous benefits from its eForms solution, including:

• Cost savings resulting from not having to order preprinted forms from a vendor.
• Cost savings resulting from not having to reprint outdated forms that essentially go to waste.
• Improved workflow because employees can now instantaneously and simultaneously access all eForms, including newly created or updated forms. The electronic system also eliminates the possibility of having two or more versions of a form in use at the same time.
• A hard cost savings of approximately $7 per patient.
• Total hard cost savings of $75,000 to $100,000 in the first year, as a result of reduced printing costs.
• Rasi proved to be an EMR backup. “What’s pretty amazing with Rasi,” says Wu, “is if Siemens is down, you can go to Rasi to locate medical records. We use Rasi to search for patients.”

You can gain insight into Saint Michaels’ successful paper to electronic migration when you access this full case study.