How Using an EHR Set Us Apart from Our Competition.

While choosing PointClickCare as our EHR vendor may have been a big move for us, it was definitely the right move. I love that PointClickCare is something that will grow with us as our business grows, and I’m excited to see what will be next.

My name is Heather Fritz and I’m the Administrative Director for Cedar Creek Assisted Living. I’ve been in the industry for quite some time and I can honestly say that I am as passionate about senior care today as I was the first day that I started my career.

In my role at Cedar Creek, I am responsible for running the daily operations of the community and ensuring that our residents are receiving the best service and care possible at all times. We are a small team of 50 employees and we have a cosy community with 60 apartments, all of which are fully occupied.

Maintaining a positive reputation.

Cedar Creek is a small town in Central Florida in the heart of Crystal River, so we’re as hometown as they come! In a small community like ours, referrals really go a long way, and making sure our residents and their families receive the best experience from us has a big impact on the success of our business. In this industry, the quality of care and service you are able to provide residents with has an enormous impact on how you are able to set your business apart from others. Which is why we knew we needed to explore an electronic health record (EHR). Moving away from archaic paper documentation to an EHR has allowed Cedar Creek to standout among competitors, something I truly believe.

Now that we have all the information we need available to us in one place with PointClickCare, our team can quickly and easily provide details to hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, etc., as they need it. The system gives us more timely and accurate information and our documentation is clean and legible, which reflects positively on our team because we look much more professional to our healthcare partners, something that is really important to me.

The power of information.

The amount of information that is now available to us is incredible and the more information we have, the better we can care for our residents. We’re able to individualize care and services depending on each resident’s personal preferences and our front-line staff gets to know the residents on a deeper level.

More than this though, we are using the information available to us to ensure we are communicating more frequently and effectively with family members. The families we work with are just as much our residents as the individuals living in our community, so making sure they have the information and details they need, when they need it, is important to us as well.

A big move, but the right move.

It hasn’t been long since we implemented PointClickCare, and when we first went live with the solution we were using Point of Care and eMOR (electronic medical observation record). Since then though, we have rolled out functionalities for Marketing, SmartPath and Resident Event Calendar, finding new ways and new tools within the system that we can leverage for our business. Since implementing PointClickCare the skills on our team have enhanced and the culture internally has improved. Our staff are much happier because their jobs have been made easier with PointClickCare, and this is extremely important to me because if our employees are happy and their attitudes reflect this, our residents will have a better experience with us.

While choosing PointClickCare as our EHR vendor may have been a big move for us, it was definitely the right move. I love that PointClickCare is something that will grow with us as our business grows, and I’m excited to see what will be next.