Ambulatory+Care

=__Ambulatory Care__=

__Ambulatory Care__
Ambulatory Care is medical care delivered on an outpatient basis, otherwise not requiring admittance to a hospital. This includes: testing, doctor visits, institutional clinical care, urgent care centers, or any procedure that doesn't require the patient to be observed over night. This area of treatment could be the key to integrating the latest health care technologies into the hospital system.

__**Typical Ambulatory Patient Procedure**__:
 * **Patient Identification:** putting the patients informatio like date of birth, and name on an armband.
 * **Proper Communication:** The lack of communication between patients and the staff usuallly results in the postponement of necessary procedures and care.
 * **Medicinal Safety:** The process of checking with the patient and their medical records to see if any medicine or anesthesia could cause any conflict
 * **T (Tell):** Tell the patient what their diagnosis is.
 * **A (Approach):** Discuss the procedure with the patient.
 * **R (Region):** Look over the region where the operation is to take place.
 * **G (Goal):** Evaluate the pros and cons of the precedure.
 * **E (Evaluate):** Final Evaluation.
 * **T (Transfer Information):** Relay information to necessary entity.
 * **Infection Control:** The following of the infection control standards to reduce the risk of contamination in the clinic.

__Technology Applications__
Providing more outpatient services using recent advances in technology could greatly increase the efficiency of health care. Patients who don't need extended hospital stays often do not get the thorough examinations that more severe cases get, so their health histories can get over looked, or not taken into account. With the use of new technologies to facilitate outpatient care, medical histories could be readily available creating a more effective system. In addition to histories, health practitioners could have easy access to treatment standards to advise their patients on how to manage their own health issues. Instead of relying on memory, doctors, nurses and other qualified staff can have instant access to evidence-based medicine practices.

According to [|GovernmentHealth IT], "Recent figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the gap [in the demand for outpatient care versus the amount of technology being implemented] is widening. Ambulatory care visits have increased at three times the rate of population growth in the past decade. Reasons include an overall increase in demand for health care services, a push by insurers and providers to lower costs, and improvements in technologies that have allowed doctors to perform more surgical procedures on an outpatient basis."

With raising medical costs and the increase traffic of emergency rooms, outpatient services are an integral part of keeping order in the hectic clinical environment. One recent technology tries to deal with this problem by using the same methods already available in other industries. "Galvanon, an NCR company based in Maitland, Fla., helps healthcare organizations enhance the patient experience at home, in the hospital and in the physician’s office through innovative solutions such as kiosks, Web self-service applications and technology." [|(NCR.com)] These systems use portable eClipboards to expedite the check-in process. These kinds of technologies paired with medical service technologies will create a much faster and more accurate system.

Currently there is great debate over the integration of EHR's (Electtronic Health Records) into the amubulatory care atmosphere. Despite all the apprarent advantages of adopting the policy, many clinics are still skeptical that the long term benefit of the computerized systems aren't worth the initial trouble of crossing over. [|Integration]
 * __Current Technological Issue__**

__Links__
[|Urgent Care Association of America] [|Outpatient Care Technology] [|HIMSS- Ambulatory Care] [|Medikiosk] [|Automationmed.com] [|Patients First Urgent Care, Tallahassee, Florida]