Benefits of Implementing an Anesthesia Information Management System
Automating anesthesia records seems like an easy decision in a world where hospitals and surgical facilities have been fully transitioned to paperless patient and medical records for years. Paper charting is still quite common among anesthesia departments across the world and implementing an anesthesia information management system (AIMS) requires tremendous expertise. For years, we have helped our clients transition to electronic medical records and realize the benefits of AIMS.
Leverage Data to Work for You
Perhaps the most important benefit of implementing electronic anesthesia records is achieving the ability to efficiently collect and analyze anesthesia data. As a hospital or facility administrator, you know how powerful data is in increasing the efficacy of procedures and improving outcomes for all patients. Compiling and storing a set of universal data pertaining to anesthesia care is invaluable because it will allow various other departments to make more informed decisions.
How to Implement AIMS
Implementing AIMS is precarious for several reasons. Aside from anesthesia providers having their own concerns about the nuances of electronic data capture, implementing AIMS is usually expensive. There is also a need for considerable customization of each practice’s EMR. Training and supporting anesthesia providers on the new system can also be challenging, as can translating the data for billing and coding purposes. One of the first steps in implementing AIMS is choosing a system from a qualified vendor. We have helped many of our clients choose the right system for their unique practices as we are familiar with the most common vendors.
Is Implementing AIMS Right for Your Practice?
AIMS improves many of the shortcomings of manual data collection. If you are seeing a lack of consistency or legibility in the way anesthetic experiences are being documented, implementing AIMS will remedy these issues. We find the majority of our clients are ultimately happy with their decisions to transition to AIMS. The transition goes much smoother with the support of an experienced anesthesia management group like CCI Anesthesia. Our AIMS experts will assist every step of the way—from choosing an AIMS vendor, to customizing their product, to training anesthesia providers on the software and finally to converting data into valuable knowledge.
Our Best AIMS Advice
Implementing AIMS is certainly no walk in the park. It takes a great deal of expertise, coordination and money to implement AIMS—but will it pay off? Our best advice to make the implementation of AIMS worth the time and investment is to truly leverage its data. Armed with data captured by AIMS, you will be in a better position to make informed decisions that can lead to:
- Reduced anesthesia drug wastage
- Improved OR turnover times
- More on-time case starts
- Reduced patient time in PACU
These are only a few examples of how data captured by AIMS can improve your bottom line. If your anesthesia department has already implemented AIMS but the data is not being leveraged to its fullest extent, you should find out why.
Putting Data to Work for Your Facility
At CCI Anesthesia, data is among our most valuable assets. We challenge our team of billing and compliance experts to regularly examine documentation samples at each of our client facilities to ensure thoroughness and accuracy in charting—whether it is done on paper or electronically. Our practice management teams monitor operational efficiency in real-time through our tablet-based EMR system while our clinical informatics team maintains a constant watch on quality metrics. The end result for our clients is reduced costs, increased efficiency, improved quality and better clinical outcomes.
If your anesthesia department needs to be smoothly and successfully transitioned to AIMS, contact us today at 800.494.3948.