Microsoft Honors Healthcare Professionals for Innovative Uses Of Microsoft Office

SAN ANTONIO May 12, 2003 The president of a family practice clinic, a physician and a nursing informatics specialist are each first-place winners in a Microsoft Corp.-sponsored competition to honor healthcare professionals making innovative use of the Microsoft® Office family of products. The results were announced today at TEPR 2003, the 19th annual Toward an Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) conference and exhibition.

Kerry Stratford, M.D., president of the St. George Clinic in St. George, Utah; Francis Milewski, M.D., of Crystal Coast Ear, Nose & Throat in Jacksonville, N.C.; and James Smith, MSN, RN, of Our Lady of Peace/Mount St. Mary’s Long Term Care Facility in Niagara Falls, N.Y., were each awarded a Tablet PC as winners of Microsoft’s Office in Healthcare Contest.

An additional seven healthcare professionals, ranging from physicians to an administrative assistant, were honored for their innovative use of Microsoft Office and were each given a Microsoft Xbox® video game system.

The Microsoft Office in Healthcare Contest is part of Microsoft’s commitment to creating Healthcare Without Boundaries. The initiative is based on using Microsoft technology and open industry standards to help organizations create seamless information infrastructures so healthcare data can be shared across platforms and organizations using enhanced security technology.

“As a physician, I know how crucial the flow of information is to patient care as well as to hospital and private practice administration,”
said Dr. Ahmad Hashem, global healthcare productivity manager for the Healthcare Industry Solutions Group at Microsoft.
“This is why it is so gratifying to see the creative ways in which individuals are using Microsoft Office to enhance the delivery of healthcare.”

Entrants were judged by a panel of Microsoft representatives based on the number of features in Office they were using, their productivity gains, and how applicable the featured uses would be in other healthcare settings.

The three first-place winners of the Microsoft Office in Healthcare Contest, each of whom received a Motion Computing M1200 Tablet PC, are as follows:

  • Francis Milewski, M.D., Crystal Coast Ear, Nose & Throat, Jacksonville, N.C. As an ear, nose and throat specialist in solo practice, Milewski uses Microsoft Word to create office notes and letters on personalized templates. He uses Microsoft Excel to prepare, track and record employee payroll and taxes, and to track and record the number and types of office visits. Milewski uses Microsoft Outlook® to create and follow his daily business and personal schedules, and to store business information on the referring physicians and organizations he does business with.

“Microsoft Office provides the tools I need to manage my practice,”
Milewski said.
“Just one example is how I use the Autotext feature in Word to insert predefined phrases and blocks of information, which streamlines and expedites documenting patient histories, physical examinations and treatments. This decreases the time that I spend completing paperwork, allows me to see more patients, and also reduces transcription costs.”

  • James Smith, MSN, RN, Our Lady of Peace/Mount St. Mary’s Long Term Care Facility, Niagara Falls, N.Y. As a nursing informatics specialist, Smith has integrated Microsoft Office throughout his work. In addition to using Outlook for e-mail and to keep a calendar of meetings, events and project due dates, he uses Microsoft PowerPoint® to create presentation materials for educational and training sessions. Smith uses Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access to collect and aggregate data on a shared database. He also uses Word to create forms for the Our Lady of Peace/Mount St. Mary’s Long Term Care Facility, and uses Microsoft FrontPage® to maintain the facility’s intranet.

“I wouldn’t be able to function if I was required to do all my tasks manually,”
Smith said.
“The Microsoft Office family of products is a powerful productivity builder. I wouldn’t want to work without it.”

  • Kerry Stratford, M.D., president, St. George Clinic, St. George, Utah. As the president and one of eight providers at the family practice clinic, Stratford has been using a Tablet PC since October with the Journal software to fill out templates for medical records in digital ink. He also uses it to track his hospital postings in Outlook. His office uses an Access database for reports and it can be interfaced with his scheduling software. His office uses Excel for financial reports. One of Stratford’s most interesting uses of Microsoft Office is in his interaction with patients who speak foreign languages.

Stratford said,
“I have better communication with my patients who speak Spanish and other languages because I can use Word to translate patient questions and provide them with handouts translated to their primary language.”

Others honored in the Microsoft Office in Healthcare Contest, each of whom received a Microsoft Xbox video game system, are as follows:

  • Diane Alejo, information systems manager, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

  • Vimal Chowdhry, vice president of Business Effectiveness, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Mich.

  • Douglas Gibson, M.D., Connecticut Radiology Associates, Derby, Conn.

  • Sarah Hirsch, administrative assistant, Oakland Psychological Clinic, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

  • Nick Hoda, psychologist in training, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Miss.

  • Cecil Lynch, M.D., M.S, medical informaticist, California Department of Health Services, and lecturer at the University of California, Davis

  • Thomas Schwieterman, M.D., Schwieterman Family Physicians, Coldwater, Ohio

New Contest Announced for Microsoft Office System 2003 Using Current Beta 2 Kit

The Microsoft Healthcare Industry Solutions Group is sponsoring a contest for innovative use of the Microsoft Office System. The contest will recognize solutions that use the newest version of the product, Microsoft Office 2003. The contest is open to submissions from individuals or teams to recognize those who are creating innovative healthcare solutions using the Microsoft Office System. Each winning individual or group will receive a Tablet PC. Entries may be submitted between May 11 and July 13, 2003. More information can be found at http://www.mshug.org/.

About Microsoft Office 2003 and the Microsoft Office System

Microsoft Office 2003 will help healthcare organizations, their employees and their patients transform the way information is collected and stored. Microsoft Office 2003 connects people, information and business processes, making it easier for people to take more-effective action and get better results. The core suite includes the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client, the Microsoft Office Word 2003 document authoring application, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentation graphics program and the Microsoft Office Access 2003 database. Also included is Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager, which helps small businesses better manage their customer contacts and sales opportunities.

The Microsoft Office System encompasses core Microsoft Office 2003 products in addition to Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, Microsoft Office InfoPath™ 2003, Microsoft Office OneNote™ 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, Microsoft Office Visio® 2003, Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint™
Services.

About the Healthcare Industry Solutions Group

The Microsoft Healthcare Industry Solutions Group guides development and implementation of Microsoft’s strategy for helping healthcare organizations benefit from Microsoft’s commitment to creating Healthcare Without Boundaries. The group develops strategic relationships with key customers, partners and industry organizations, defining solution offerings, developing appropriate licensing and channel offerings, and working with geographic regions and districts to help healthcare organizations benefit from Microsoft solutions.

Hashem leads a key team in the group dedicated to working with industry partners to create productivity-enhancing healthcare solutions. The following professionals bring a broad range of healthcare industry experience to Hashem’s team:

  • Don Campbell, productivity technology specialist, brings years of experience as a programming architect and developer to defining and articulating technical strategy for information worker productivity.

  • Robin Raiford, BSN, RN, BC, CPHIMS, business productivity enterprise adviser, brings 25 years of nursing experience and 12 years in the informatics field to her work with enterprise customers across all segments of the healthcare industry.

  • Dwayne Robinson, business productivity specialist, has more than 15 years of experience marketing directly to the pharmaceutical industry and has special responsibility for helping organizations benefit from using the Microsoft Office System.

  • Chris Sullivan, business productivity adviser, has extensive experience in enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and supply chain management. Sullivan also helps healthcare organizations benefit from empowering their information workers with Microsoft technology that transforms the way healthcare information is integrated throughout the workplace and the industry.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software any time, any place and on any device.

Microsoft, Xbox, Outlook, PowerPoint, FrontPage, InfoPath, OneNote, Visio, Windows and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information on Microsoft Healthcare: http://www.microsoft.com/healthcare/

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp .

Related Posts