Electronic Clipboard or Paper

[tunnelrat83]

Hey just currious.. do yall have the electronic PCR, touch screen, toughbooks, pentabs, etc, (whatever you wana call them) or do yall use paper Patient care reports? just wondering.. we are getting ready to go to an electronic toughbook touch screen thing... just currious what others have.

[Woody76559]

I worked for a company that did the electronic patient thing. They lost over $250K when the computer system crashed. We'll stick to paper as long as I can.

[akroeze]

As far as I know all of Ontario has a standardised ACR on paper.

[ed2brute]

Paper and electronic. In the field the info is recorded on a paper form. Patient info is gathered and events are recorded. There is no room for a complete narrative on the paper form, though, basically just the raw data. After the call, and back at the base, the call is typed into the computer and stored in a database. The paper form is filed away for system audits and acts as a crude back-up should the database go down.

[Richard B the EMT]

FDNY is supposed to be going to a computer scannable PCR (we call the paper an Ambulance Call Report). We tried one variety of it before, and are supposedly looking at a different system.

[Ridryder 911]

We are going to electronic, supposed to start soon, this has been a heated debate between medics & management. The larger metro service has electronic & had to hire 4 full time computer tech's for 24 hr coverage, when the system crashes. Some of our medics works there part-time & describes all the down time, with them. You do get less denials on claims, since everything is checked before system can clear. So the management is looking for increase $$$. However; we should look at the over all costs.

Be safe,

Ridryder 911

[strippel]

In PA, electronic PCRs are required.

We've talked about getting them in the trucks, especially for the transport crews, but...it would probably be bad. The program runs through a secure internet connection.

I've used a couple of commercial programs which were ok. The one we use now (EMSTAT) is tolerable. At my part-time, we use a different one. It is made by those people who make the best EMS billing software, and sucks big time.

We used to have our own PCR program, written by our IT guy and approved by DOH. That program rocked!

[VillageEMT]

It's hard to believe that our little village is more automated than NYFD, but ePCRs are the norm up here. The SREMS requires them. We have a paper "call sheet" that we use to record the basic information. This gets inputted into the laptop in the rig and transferred, via floppy, to the server. The server gets backed up remotely on a daily basis. The system faxes a copy to the ER when we commit the PCR.

It works very well, even though the user interface is a bit clunky. You have to have all of the required fields filled in to commit it, so that much at least is covered. There is a drug look-up dictionary and a spelling checker, both essential for me. I had to do paper PCRs for my clinical runs and hated it, ePCR is much easier. But then I've been working with computers for... well let's just say a very long time.

Hey, where is the punch card reader on this thing...

[MedFire]

Our dept uses paper. We go to one hospital that has a computer so we can do it on there but we have some problems with that. Not just the obvious like it not saving and then u have to do it over again and then just write it out anyway. But these are some big ones. They automaticaly put our names and emt #'s in there. we dont sign them. huh no signiture not legal. if you need the doc's signiture for meds they have to sign all 3 of the papers not just the one with the carbon copys. HAHA trying to get a doc to sign one paper is hard enough but 3 c'mon. But heres the kicker if we sign the sheets then we altered the document. same goes for the doc's signiture. so once again its not a legal document. this had been brought up to OEMS and they tell us if we dont want to use it then dont but they cant take responsibility for it if we do use it and it goes to court. So with my experence with it I stay with paper PCR's

[lemonlimeEMT]

We use the electronic PCRs...they are pretty cool; it's light and portable, easy to use on-scene, it's got spell checker and a drug dictionary, very useful. When we get to the hospital, they've got a thing set up where we download the PCR into the hospital system and make a print out for them, and we get back to the station we download it into our system. It works really well and I like it so much more than the paper PCRs we had when I was a student. Thank God for technology.