PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — State prison officials hope to persuade the governor that it’s time to convert the health records of Oregon inmates to an electronic system.
Oregon Department of Corrections officials have tried to put an electronic health records system in place for several years. In 2013, they put in a budget request for $2.6 million, but the governor’s office trimmed the request before it could come to a vote in the Legislature.
Prison officials plan to make a new pitch to the governor’s office this summer to transfer the files to a digital storehouse, The Oregonian newspaper reported.
Prison health care officials say paper files are inefficient. A key problem confronting the paper filing system is that inmates’ medical, dental, mental health and pharmaceutical records — all kept by hand – reside in one chart. This means that if a prisoner goes to see a doctor, his file might be found with the dentist. Finding those files can take hours.
“In a rare case, it might take us a day to locate it,” said Steve Robbins, the prison system’s top health administrator.
With files spread across 14 prisons, it’s also impossible for officials to search for trends that might improve inmate health.
“If someone were to ask me how many broken arms that we’ve had in the Department of Corrections in the last two years, I couldn’t tell you,” Robbins says. “With an electronic health record … we can begin to learn why people are breaking their arms so we can begin to address those things operationally.”
Besides current prisoners, the state also maintains the files of at least 40,000 former inmates, and those records jam the shelf space in a Salem warehouse.
The big question for Oregon prison officials is how to make the transition from millions of pieces of paper to electronic records. Putting all the files into a secure database would be a huge challenge.
One way, Robbins said, is to pick a date to begin storing new records electronically, keeping the old files on paper. Another way is to start the electronic storage system and then work backward to scan the paper files into the new system.
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Information from: The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com
