Ambulatory Care System

Nursing Informatics in Ambulatory Care Information System

Covers a wide range of health care services that are provided for patients who are not admitted
overnight to a hospital.

These services are performed at outpatient clinics, urgent care centers, emergency rooms, ambulatory
or same-day surgery centers, diagnostic and imaging centers, primary care centers, community health
centers, occupational health centers, mental health clinics, and group practices.

Ambulatory Care Information System

 Provides automated processing of data and information such as allergies and medical alerts,
patients accounting system such as charging, billing, discounts and concessions, diagnostics
imaging treatments, and etc.
 With this system, the patient waiting time is optimized through effective queue management.
 It involves one-time registration required per visit. It also facilitates the management of doctor’s
schedule.

Advantages of Ambulatory Care Information System

 Real-time and easy access to patient’s medical records by healthcare providers.

 Improved workflow, which allows more time for comprehensive patient counseling and review.
 Reduced errors with the availability of various automation engines – drug interaction engine;
medical alert engine; patient billing engine, etc.
 Automated and integrated back-end process such as pharmacy, billing, purchasing, inventory
management, etc.
 Improved clinical outcome analysis – enhanced research productivity through data mining and
facilitate institutional handling of managed care challenges in a timely manner.
 Improvement in hospital inventory management.
 Better monitoring and management of costs – prescription, consumables, doctor’s fees, etc.


Issues in Ambulatory Care Information System

 Increased accountability
 The need for continuous support
 Privacy and confidentiality of information
 Accessibility and security of data and information
 Integration and support to the other system
The Role of Nurse Using Information System in the Ambulatory Care System

 The very basic objective of the automated ambulatory care information system is to easily
integrate the data to the other data and easily translate these data into information.
 The effective transformation of data can be integrated to the other processes to transform it
into knowledge.
 The ambulatory care nurse and other health care provider should be capable enough to
implement the process effectively.