Improvement Stories:
Fingerprints Prove That Hawthorn Is on the Cutting Edge
Hawthorn Medical Associates in Dartmouth, MA serves more than 130,000 patients each year. The practice switched from paper records to electronic health records (EHRs). And, they did so on the same day that they moved into a new building. To ensure the privacy of patients, each doctor’s computer has a fingerprint recognition device. This means only the patient’s doctor can securely access their patients’ EHRs.
For their efforts, Hawthorn won the Partners HealthCare Nesson Award for Excellence. This is the highest award for innovation in medical practice and collaboration among doctors in pursuit of excellence that a physician practice can receive within our organization. Partners HealthCare feels that the added safety and efficiency benefits of EHRs are well worth the effort required to move from the routine paper record to the electronic one. For this reason, Partners HealthCare required all primary care physicians to adopt EHRs by the end of 2008 and all specialists by the end of 2009.