Hospital revamps the way it manages healthcare documentation

Carrus Hospital in Texas has added an imaging solution to complement its management of clinical information with productivity software used organizationwide. Carrus has deployed Nuance Power PDF software to manage nursing and general procedures to drive efficiency, enabling employees to be more productive and tackle additional initiatives, according to Nuance. The hospital already uses Nuance healthcare solutions to improve clinical documentation.

A 40-bed facility offering an intensive care unit, rehab, long-term acute care and outpatient services, Carrus wanted to manage a host of handbooks detailing policies and processes for everything from patient care to nursing procedures and general staff guidelines. Those handbooks help ensure patients receive proper care and provide compliance guidelines and human resources information to staff.

In the past, Carrus struggled with its legacy PDF software, which posed user experience challenges for non-tech-savvy personnel, as well as the hospital’s CEO and chief nursing officer (CNO). Familiar with Nuance from its use of Dragon Medical Practice Edition, the hospital launched a proof of concept initiative with Power PDF. In its software evaluation, Carrus was impressed with the Power PDF user interface and also found the software cost less than the competition, Nuance reports.

Gary Glenn, director of IT at Carrus, says, “Most PDF suites have fairly similar capabilities, so we sought to find software that was as user-friendly as possible to minimize the learning curve. We are not a large hospital so cost is another critical factor. If you look at features, not cost, Power PDF is going to be the choice. Then, once you also examine cost, it was a no-brainer decision to select Nuance Power PDF software.”

Carrus Hospital uses Nuance Power PDF software to create, convert and assemble industry-standard PDF files. With the solution, the Carrus Hospital CEO can open PDF documents, edit them and save the updated documents. The human resources department can update its policies and procedures handbook more readily. Additionally, the CNO can import PDF document from other sources, extract pages and lay out new PDF documents quickly, updating nursing-related policies and procedures.