For the second time in less than a year, the Naval Hospital Bremerton in Washington received accolades from the Secretary of the Navy for implementing process improvement measures that saved the Navy money and man hours.

In June, a group of sailors from the hospital were honored for their creation of the Medical Records Data Automation Program. The initiative, which automates and streamlines medical records operations, has led to improvements in both costs and time.

Those improvements include:

  • Saving 7,300 man hours a year
  • A 40% reduction in the workload for the Patient Administration Records Division
  • A cost savings of $156,400

The impetus for creating the new process came from dealing with more than 55,000 medical records every year, including tracking the medical treatment received and keeping medical history records current.

“We got sick of that and so we were like, ‘How are we going to improve this?’” Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Kyle Church, one of the creators of the automation program, told the Defense Video Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) website.

Simplifying Processes

Church, along with Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class James Cooper and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Seth Edwards, set out to create a way for automating the time-consuming, record keeping tasks that ate up a large portion of their day.

In the beginning, only Edwards had any experience in working with computer software coding. Church and Cooper taught themselves on their own time using online tutorials.

Their ultimate goal is the same for so many process improvement projects: eliminate wasted time and money and simplify processes to make day-to-day operations more streamlined. They determined that an automated process could complete work at a pace it would normally take people twice as long to complete.

What The Program Does

The trio initially set out to track patient record inventories.

However, the process now has expanded to include daily eligibility checks for the Defense Eligibility and Enrollment Reporting System, checking records with the Composite Health Care System, email tracking and automated correspondence and CD encryption and burning.

The program earned the trio an honorable mention in the 2016 Secretary of the Navy Annual Innovation Award for automated process development, as well as recognition by the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

“For someone to recognize that, it’s a really big thing,” said Church.

It’s also not the first such recognition for Naval Hospital Bremerton. In December 2016, a Lean Six Sigma team at the hospital developed a process improvement program that cut down on wait times for patients getting immunizations.

The program also reduced staff needs for immunizations and reduced paperwork. The team received an official Navy Letter of Appreciation from the commanding officer at the Naval Health Clinic in Annapolis.