All Wanda Rawson and her crew at Guthrie Cortland Medical Center wanted to do was walk into a patient's room and get a meal order, maybe make the stay just a little more pleasant. But they couldn't.
Patients were isolated: COVID-19.
Until this week. The technology was coming, anyhow, but the pandemic pushed Guthrie and its subsidiaries to accelerate a tablet-based system that allows patients a greater level access: hospital records as they're recorded; teleconferences with friends who might not be able to come into the room.
And menu choices.
"It allows patients to see their care as it's happening," said Rawson, director of food services at the hospital, sitting this week at the nurses' station in the maternity ward.
The maternity unit piloted the system for the entire five-hospital Guthrie system, said hospital representative Steve Osterhaus. This week, the system went live across the Cortland hospital, and most of the health network's other hospitals, too.
The system makes interaction a little easier for the patients, said Nursing Manager Olga Levitskiy, and for the nurses, too.
Take accessing medical records, for example: "Patients had to contact medical records, sign a waiver, and then get the paper records," she said.
With the new system, they simply have to tap a couple of digital buttons on the tablet. Not, mind you, that it makes the records any easier to understand; that's where the nurses and other health-care providers step in.
The technology comes into its own in other ways, Rawson said. Before, patients admitted at the wrong time, or sleeping when staff took meal choices, had to accept the kitchen's pot luck. Now, they can select their meals at their convenience. The tablet also allows medical providers to program menu restrictions for people who need them — say, diabetic patients who must count carbs.
It also allows visiting in a new way. Each device is coded with a unique email address, Levitskiy said. Patients, particularly COVID patients who must be kept isolated, can at least teleconference with friends and loved ones who otherwise would be kept on the other side of the door.
It has access to the internet, and even a couple of games, Rawson said.
The crux of the system is giving a patient easy access to records, which can be easily transferred to other facilities using Epic, an independent medical records platform used at facilities across America, Osterhaus said. "I think it's about the patient having ownership of their own records," he said.
But the tablets do make a difficult time just a little bit easier, even if it's just picking the chicken parmesan, Rawson added: "This puts something back in their control."
