The Western Cape government (WCG) Department of Health's (DoH) new Khayelitsha Hospital has implemented OpenText's Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution, as part of its drive to ensure that it delivers a world-class, patient-centric clinical service.
Datacentrix, a provider of high-performing and secure ICT solutions and local OpenText Global Alliance partner, carried out the project for the hospital.
Trish Dicks, national strategy manager: ECM public sector at Datacentrix, explains that the hospital's ECM vision is to reduce physical documentation and paper-based files wherever possible within its processes, in order to improve management of patient files and information and, ultimately, to enhance service delivery.
“One of the hospital's key drivers for the implementation of ECM is to ensure that patient information is accurately and completely recorded according to clinical, legal and ethical requirements, and that an efficient system is in place to archive and retrieve digital medical records or patient files.”
Being a green field project meant that the systems, tools and technologies employed by Khayelitsha Hospital were designed to best serve the needs of the institution and its patients.
Says Dicks: “The ECM project has created and delivered the capacity for Khayelitsha Hospital to convert its paper patient records into electronic format. The OpenText ECM solution provides a central repository for the secure capture of these electronic patient records. It also uses an indexing model that allows medical staff to quickly and easily access patient records using a few key words such as patient name and hospital file number.
“By working closely with hospital commissioning staff, all standard forms have now been barcoded to assist in the automation of the labelling and indexing of content, which will considerably increase accuracy and efficiency, and automatically identify patient hospital record numbers and hospital document types.”
“One of the major reasons for dissatisfaction within public sector hospitals and community health centres are the lengthy waiting times,” states Dr Anwar Kharwa, CEO of Khayelitsha Hospital. “This is a challenge we are hoping to dramatically reduce at Khayelitsha Hospital. The hospital opened in January 2012 and patient file retrieval times in Admissions have been reduced to zero as a result of doctors now being able to access them electronically.
“In addition, the ECM project has help cut waiting times, as doctors now have information about patients at hand before seeing them.”
The implementation of OpenText ECM has also decreased the risk of case files not being stored effectively, something that places the hospital at risk, as well as increasing the likelihood of positive audit outcomes.
The project provides the hospital with the typical ECM benefits already achieved in other DoH implementations (particularly in the management of electronic medical records), and has:
* Eliminated the movement of physical patient records through the institution, thus minimising potential issues with lost files or missing content, as the physical patient file does not leave medical records.
* Ensured that the patient care team requires no physical copy of patient history.
* Been designed in such a way that the intelligent scanning of required content on a just-in-time basis reduces the cost versus a full back-scanning approach.
* Retained the use of paper-based notes for content creation during patient encounters, thus preserving wet signatures and hardcopies for regulatory compliance.
* Created anywhere, anytime access to scanned content at consulting rooms, nurses' stations, doctors' offices, OPD and Allied Health facilities.
Furthermore, a solution has been designed to assist in the efficient running and reporting on the hospital's administration. The solution takes into account the organisation's management needs and provides workspaces for functional teams, management groups, committees, task teams and any other collaborative groupings required.
A page, aligned to the Divisional Management Accountability Framework (DMAF) on which the hospital's performance is assessed, has also been designed. This DMAF page links to the relevant areas within the OpenText solution, allowing for content to be generated and stored within functional structures, while still providing management with access to relevant information and content without the need to navigate the workspace structure.
“The ECM project at Khayelitsha Hospital has been a resounding success,” continues Dicks. “Datacentrix is pleased to have been able to assist the hospital in improving the efficiency of its record-keeping, an issue with which many hospitals struggle.”
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