Computerized Records Can Save a Baby's Life.

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. -- It's a catch-phrase that babies aren't always born between 9 am and 5 pm and often they don't come easily. Those are challenges anyone practicing obstetrics faces. But over the past four years, Dr. Susan Coleman of Danville, Kentucky, has found that electronic records can ease the problems for both physicians and patients and, in some cases, avert a potential catastrophe.

"A patient who has to be rushed to the emergency room can suddenly become aware that she can't tell the nurses what they need to know. Sometimes these are the simplest things -- what medications is she taking, what blood group is she -- let alone the details of any complications she has had. Few of them could accurately describe the treatment I've prescribed for problems," Coleman says. "In extreme circumstances she may not be able to give any information at all because she's unconscious."

All health care teams have evolved methods of coping with such difficulties, Coleman acknowledges. "But now I can look at my patients' records from any available computer with internet access -- at home, in the emergency room, wherever, and at any time. Clearly that puts me more on top of problems."

The system she uses, ChartWare, allows her to provide a patient with a mini-CD containing all relevant data, including laboratory and ultrasound results. On it she records all visits prior to 37 weeks gestation and more data can be added later if there is a significant change.

"Normally, if the hospital needs the information, I simply forward it myself. But in an emergency the patient can hand the CD to the hospital staff herself," says Coleman.

This is quite a difference from paper records, she points out. "There were times when I had to find a file in my office in the middle of the night, make a photocopy and rush over to the hospital with it. On top of that, those records took a few days to transcribe. If I were on hand, I could probably remember anything important that had taken place in the meantime. But what if the hospital team had to work without me and using records that didn't include the latest visit?"

All these are special cases, she notes. "The routine benefits of computerized records are obvious every day -- no time spent chasing paper charts, lower costs, information stored in an orderly way and always accessible -- but at times too they are critical to making vital health care decisions."

ChartWare is the only electronic medical recordkeeping system, suitable for installations ranging from solo practices to hospital settings, to be awarded an overall rating of five stars in the most recent survey by Family Practice Management, journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians.