By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Sometimes organizations have to spend a little to save a little. Wednesday morning, Barton County Health Department Director Karen Winkelman asked the commission for approval to pay $29,731 for another annual subscription to the Nightingale Notes electronic medical record (EMR) program utilized by the department.
"We purchased this in December 2017 for a cost of $20,478," Winkelman said. "Within about a five-year time frame, we have 29,806 clients in the system. This has been a really good EMR for us, and we're looking at even enhancing it with some collaboration with KDHE to bring some of their standalone program information into the system."
Commission Chair Shawn Hutchinson noted the number of clients in the system exceeds the number of residents currently living in the county. Winkelman said that has a lot to due with the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Over the three year COVID pandemic span, that number just escalated fast," she said. "If we would have had to make paper charts for each one of those, the cost would have been phenomenal, along with the cost of employee workload."
Health department staff uses the program for documentation and billing, and they can scan received records into the system and pull data required for grants. Winkelman said a discounted rate is offered for multi-year contracts, but given the fluid nature of EMRs, she preferred the one-year route. The commission voted 5-0 to pay for the subscription, which will run from March 1, 2023, to Feb. 28, 2024.