By DAVID CLOUSTON Salina Journal
3/6/2011
The cost of new technological advances in health care isn't like manufacturing costs, although that's a popular public misconception, said Micheal Terry, president and chief executive officer of Salina Regional Health Center.

"You increased your cost this year with new machines or whatever, so they think that much goes up next year to the end product. But it doesn't work that way," Terry said.

Nonprofit hospitals like Salina Regional rely mainly on fixed reimbursements from insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid for operating income. If the hospital adds more expensive technology, it's a risk the facility takes on its own. But each advance helps improve patient outcomes and makes the facility more valuable to the patients who live in the area.

"We want to be a regional provider that provides the level of care and technology and ability to be taken care of here versus in Wichita or elsewhere," said Joel Phelps, the hospital's chief operating officer.

Part of what technology does is let you do things faster and less invasively -- the hospital's new da Vinci robotic surgical system, acquired at a cost of about $1.8 million, is a good example, said Charlie Grimwood, vice president of regional development for the hospital.

Using the da Vinci System, hysterectomy and prostate surgery patients, for example, will most often stay one day in the hospital after their operations and be back to near full function and returning to their jobs in about two weeks. That compares to the traditional surgical methods, which often led to a three-day post-operative hospital stay and a recuperation period of four to six weeks before returning to work.

"If you're going to give better service to your patients, you're going to have to improve technology," Terry said.

Salina Regional is one of the city's largest employers, with a work force of about 1,250 and an annual payroll of about $50 million. Its annual expenses are about $150 million, Phelps said.

In the past five years, the hospital has reinvested more than $50 million in new medical technology and facilities to stay technologically current. That's in addition to the $70 million, six-story patient care tower addition, which opened in January 2009. The addition offers more private rooms and a new main entrance and lobby.

One area of operations in which the hospital has reduced expenses by employing new technology in recent years has been in information technology systems. IT expenses have dropped from 4.7 percent of total hospital expenses to 3 percent since 2005, said Larry Barnes, the hospital's vice president for information technology.

In 2007, the hospital signed a contract with Medical Information Technologies, a Boston-based company whose software and electronic record keeping systems are used in 2,000 hospitals nationwide.

Today, on a scale ranking how thoroughly hospitals throughout the nation have converted to electronic medical record-keeping, Salina Regional ranks in the top 3.8 percent, Barnes said.

"That's just an acknowledgement of the progress we've made implementing systems that support clinicians and physicians providing patient care," he said.

Salina Regional operates a hybrid system, Barnes said. In each patient's room, a paper chart is still used to track progress. But as much as 96 percent of the information used to create the paper chart is gathered electronically.

"For instance, this includes orders that are entered, test results received and transcriptions completed," Barnes said.

Each patient's wristband is electronically bar-coded. When a nurse arrives at the patient's bedside, a wireless electronic device can read the bar code and confirm the patient's identity and the medication the patient is to receive. The medicine container also is bar-coded and is scanned when the patient receives a dose.

The electronic records system also has a remote access feature so that physicians and physicians' offices can receive patient information from the system. It also gives physicians the ability to do electronic signatures.

"This allows them to review and sign all of their charts remotely. That's a big help for them," Barnes said.

Later this year, Salina Regional plans to implement an online patient portal site that will enable patients to pay their bills online and look at their health records. In the future, they also may be able to schedule follow-up appointments with physicians and therapists, he said.

nReporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.