When Holly Patterson Geriatric Center, a subsidiary of Nassau University Medical Center inquired about using barcodes to track medical charts, we showed them how Travese can be used to achieve thier goals.

I'm in the company of nurses a lot. My wife is a nurse and her friends are nurses. The inability to locate a patient's chart is a common complaint that I've heard all too often. When a facility is already short staffed, misplaced items can be among the top few causes for frustration. We receive calls and web requests daily and most see the benefits of Traverse instantly.

Traverse is a natural choice for for barcoding physical records. It also has an H7 interface so it can send and receive data to other medical systems.

This is not an argument for or against EMAR (Electronic Medication and Administration Record) or EHR (Electronic Health Record), but rather what can be done now to help alleviate some of the problems that exist in care facilities across the country.

The promise of eliminating paper has been in existence for decades and great strides have been made to this end. Electronic medical records are critical to our present and future with good reason. However elimination of 100% of paper records may not be practical or feasible in all situations.

Nursing homes or long term care facilities are challenged by many factors in this endeavor. Even if they do adopt an electronic approach, it is likely that the paper approach will still be used on the floor and then electronically transcribed later, or the paper approach will be used at times when the electronic systems become unavailable.

This will change over time and will be driven by cost and availability. That is, the cost of systems and availability of systems and staff.

When a facility subscribes to systems that are hosted on the internet or in the cloud, they are subject to all the things that can render the systems temporarily unavailable. The amount of downtime and the frequency that it occurs can vary based on the cause. Security and privacy are also major concerns.

Bringing such systems in house sometimes requires additional technical staff and certainly additional manpower to implement them.

The age old problem of "where is it" exists now and will exist for some time to come.

Sometimes medical charts seem to go missing for various reasons. Someone took it and neglected to tell anyone or didn't return it to the proper place, etc.

Companies of all kinds have benefited by implementing tracking systems that use barcodes so why not care facilities?

Unlike implementing EMAR or EHR systems, implementing a barcode tracking system for the purpose of tracking physical medical charts can be quick and simple and the time it saves in locating the physical records can be priceless.

We showed Holly Patterson how to relieve some pressure today using barcodes as they continue to address other issue.

Using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for added security is recommended for in house and hosted systems. If you have ever noticed when you go to your bank's web site the URL is HTTPS instead of HTTP, the "S" is for secure and uses SSL. When SSL is used, the data transmission between your browser and the Web Server is encrypted.

Using SSL is just another measure to ensure HIPAA 45 CFR 164.502(a)(1)(iii) compliance. But you have control as to what data is stored to be compliant as well.

We are also sensitive to the average care facility's budget and have priced the software, training, and support in a very common sense manner.