Team Oriented Medical Care at Matsushita Memorial Hospital
In 2009, Matsushita Memorial Hospital in Moriguchi, Japan, made the switch to electronic health records (EHRs) from a pen and paper data entry method. The hospital eventually deployed Panasonic Toughbook H1 Health Mobile Clinical Assistants (MCAs). The change was initiated after Matsushita Memorial created a hospital-wide standard of one nurse per seven patients, in 2006. It was only a matter of time until the hospital wanted to match its technology with the quality of its personal patient care. The hospital employed PDAs in an effort to increase efficiency and enhance bedside data entry. When the PDAs proved to be limited and unaccommodating with low functionality and battery power, Matsushita Memorial decided to try a fully-integrated mobile solution: the Toughbook H1 Health.
The transition to the Toughbook MCAs was easy and resulted in benefits for both the hospital and its patients. Currently, there are 60 Toughbook H1 Health devices in use and the staff has reported excellent battery life, portability and durability. Of course, the most important advantage to implementing this mobile computing solution has been the ability to increase quality of patient care and truly build a team among the clinical staff hospital-wide.
The medical staff of Matsushita Memorial also employs Toughbook H1 Health’s as a tool to help improve communication between nurses and patients. Nurses can easily share information, which might otherwise be difficult to convey, by displaying interactive charts and graphics on the screen of the MCA.
Regarding enhanced patient-to-nurse communication, Fumiyo Sakai, Assistant Director of Matsushita Memorial Hospital said, “Team-oriented medical care is when information and issues pertaining to nurse-care planning are shared among patients and nurses. It is where patients are convinced of the right approach because their wishes and desires have been considered. In this regard, I think the ability of the H1 to allow the patient to directly view information on the screen side-by-side with the nurse is its great merit.”
A full case study is available, here.
