Member Focus

Title: Executive director/administrator
Name of ASC: Pend Oreille Surgery Center LLC
City: Ponderay
State: Idaho
How long has your facility been an ASCA member? 5 or more years

What technological advancement has made the biggest difference during your career?

Love it or hate it, an integrated practice management (PM)/electronic medical records (EMR) system is by far the greatest technological advancement in my career.

I remember the days of pulling charts, piling them up and pushing them on a cart to the conference room for physician peer review. Same process for chart audits where I would have stacks of charts around my desk as I prepared reports on anything from pathology and surveillance reporting to implant tracking. Storing paper charts also was a headache. All that wasted real estate that could have been used for office space. Business office and medical records staff are now able to work on patient records, which are all at their fingertips.

Yes, electronic PM and EMR software has definitely made the biggest difference in my opinion.