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St George’s
Hospital Gets on
the ‘FastTrak’ to
Electronic Patient
Records
Had St George’s Hospital intentionally set about to trial the
integration capabilities of TrakHealth’s Web-based healthcare
information system, it probably could not have devised a more
strenuous test than the New Zealand government’s mandatory
integration requirements.
After evaluating all of the competing systems supported in
New Zealand, St George’s, one of the country’s leading private
hospitals, selected TrakHealth’s TrakCare to replace an older
Galen healthcare information system. Before the hospital could
gain the expected benefits from better understanding its care
costs and integration with external systems, however,
TrakHealth first had to integrate TrakCare with New Zealand’s
National Health Index (NHI). |
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“Having an integration
platform built into TrakCare gives
you the confidence that there is a
great deal of flexibility, no matter
what happens in the future.” -Greg Brooks,
Finance Manager,
St George’s Hospital.
“Integration with the NHI was a critical piece for TrakHealth,”
says Greg Brooks, Finance Manager for St George’s Hospital.“It was not a simple task – other vendors said they would have a
lot of difficulty in getting NHI compliance.”
TrakCare's ability to quickly integrate with the National Health
Index demonstrated how easy it would be for St George’s
Hospital to integrate with other healthcare systems, such as
external pathology and radiology. “Having an integration
platform built into TrakCare gives you the confidence that there
is a great deal of flexibility, no matter what happens in the
future,” says Brooks. The ‘FastTrak to EPR’ rapid integration
capability within TrakCare makes this possible.
Swift boost to the bottom line
Phase one of the hospital’s TrakCare rollout has
seen it create a Patient Administration System
(PAS) with a hospital-wide Electronic Patient
Record (EPR), Operating Theatre Management,
and Maternity Management. TrakHealth worked
with the hospital to customise the software for
New Zealand conditions
Success has been swift in coming: even with
conversion and NHI certification the software
took just eight months to implement and has
put the hospital on the leading edge of worldwide
healthcare practices.
“We are one of the few hospitals where nursing
staff are users of the clinical system, where they
enter data at the point of care,” says Brooks. “It
is that automation plus the new billing support
which gives us a lot of information about what
is being used.”
The availability of better quality information has
a tangible effect on St George’s bottom line, he
adds. “With medical supplies, it is not unusual
for a disposable item to be A$300-A$400;
laproscopic staplers can be A$1000. If you miss
one of these then your ability to make a profit
goes out the window. Even small items make a
difference. If you don’t include sutures you’d be
surprised how quickly your margins are eroded.”
Managing profit margins is just one of Brooks’
concerns. St George’s is also grappling with an
increasingly complex billing environment as
multiple payers including health funds, New
Zealand’s Accident Compensation Corporation,
and surgeon groups can all have different billing
requirements, making it important for Brooks
and his team to better understand and analyse
patient care costs.
“It is important to know exactly what our costs
are and compare them with the contract price,
and that is where TrakCare comes in,” says
Brooks.
From care provider to service provider
St George’s Hospital also plans to make more
use of TrakCare in the future and has planned a
second phase of its implementation that will see
it use the software to deliver Medical Records
Tracking, integration with external pathology
and radiology systems, and Clinical Discharge
Summaries which can be communicated
externally to surgeons and general practitioners.
“With phase two, we will look at integrating
electronic records from radiology and pathology
providers, and communicating them to external
clinicians,” says Brooks. “We also want to give
system access to primary users like surgeons so
they can access the system and see what theatre
space is available, for example. There will be a lot
of innovation going forward.”
Most importantly, TrakCare has been able to
achieve these outcomes without increasing St.
George’s IT budget.
“When we visited sites in Australia and saw the
number of people required to maintain
competing systems, we were very concerned,”
says Brooks. “We have a single administrator
who looks after all our computer systems. The
last thing we wanted to do was employ extra
people costing hundreds of thousands of dollars
a year. TrakCare has let us achieve our goals
without needing more staff.”
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