The present description is about the paper that highlights the situation in a multi-bed hospital. Generally, the efficacy of a clinical setting rests with the management of patient information. With the ever increasing health problems and hectic work load growing over health care professionals, there is a need of efficient clinical information systems that would cater the needs of many tasks. There is a high chance of manual errors that would ultimately enhance the risk and additional burden on the administration and management.
Hence, the purpose of the paper is to draw the attention of corporate headquarters and even policy makers by highlighting the certain issues and the need of clinical information systems for our Ken’s multi-disciplinary hospital. This hospital was built in the 1999 and is located in the remote area of Nashville, New York. It is a moderately-sized hospital with 200 beds and average outpatient census of 155. For the last 8 years the issues gripping the hospital is an incompetent atmosphere emanating from the implementation of clinical information systems.
The main reasons could be attributable to the unwillingness shown by the corporate management as far as granting the proposal is concerned.
Nevertheless, as the approval and funding has been impeded, this is yet another plea to the corporate management to consider the request. The problems begin with the patients awaiting at the registration desk to get their information entered into a computer that has an old data entry system. Information retrieval has been a time consuming problem here when the doctor enquires about the case history. As there are good number of departments, the problem has further escalated to a higher degree.
The storage of vital clinical findings is likely to deteriorate the operation process, provided the hospital management is consistent with the usage of age –old patient information system. Emergency services are at the peak of problems and struggling for an efficient database. Timely interventions related to finding the solution to this problem could have even saved the lives 25 patients.
It was understood that our earlier requests on certain products lacked reliable information to address the problems. This could have probably hindered the approval and funding. Hence, we would like to provide information in this regard keeping in view of the available research literature. Anthony (2004) identified a clinical system and described that clinical care needs to be digitized as paper records are inefficient in providing standard paradigm of care, clinical governance, or clinical decision-making.To this end, National Health Service in UK was integrated with National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) (Anthony, 2004).
Her, tools based on clinical decisions would substitute old technology that restricted applications. This product comprises of information regarding health surveillance, screening and prevention (Anthony, 2004).It would be based on integrating data from primary care systems with brief summaries of clinical episodes of secondary care (Anthony, 2004). As such, this identified clinical system of NPfIT would take initiative to re-structure many clinical processes to make them safer and reliable (Anthony, 2004). This would more probably help Anesthetists in managing systems introduced as part of the electronic patient record(Anthony, 2004).This identified clinical system would subside the problems encountered in our hospital and therefore this strategy best suits to our working atmosphere.
Earlier it was reported that clinical system would achieve good progress provided there is an incorporation of a Computer Aided Information System (Kisling, Dittel & Kopacek, 1992).This could involve the rapid entry of all personal and clinical data. However, there is also a need to maintain confidentiality of the provided data. As such, the information entered as data could be better protected by categorizing them into several systems (Kisling, Dittel & Kopacek, 1992).This involves one for the administration, and the second for the clinical data. Personal data required for registration and accountment of patients. Where as the medical/clinical system would be targeting the personal data and all clinical results and functions on them (Kisling, Dittel & Kopacek, 1992).
For this purpose, the required computer accessories are hardware system based on a local area network, with IBM compatible PCs 386 as well as server workstations. The languages required to generate the database are C, ORACLE (Kisling, Dittel & Kopacek, 1992).Therefore, with the advancements made in the software technology, thorough implementation of Computer Aided Information System would facilitate a better identification of a sophisticated clinical system.
However, there is a need of good softwares in addition to the programming languages for the betterment of clinical systems, For example, Hospital clinical system software developed in US could be the best choice. It has potential to to improve patients care and minimize cost. It would provide patient focused clinical workflow automation, powerful Lab system, warn about drug interactions, allergies and health conditions (www.sulekhab2b.com). It also helps clinicians to take early decisions ameliorate quality of care, lessen the chances of medical errors, and increase outcome, ensuring inter-departments workflow automation, all patient information with a just a mouse click (www.sulekhab2b.com).
This Hospital Software is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology product equipped with most novel technology (www.sulekhab2b.com). As our hospital is having several departments, this product is a worth suitable one enough to cater the needs of multitude of patient challenges. Some of components of this software are:
Drug, allergy, health condition Interactions warning, powered database; Clinical workflow automation; Powerful patient profile monitoring, many orders such as Rx, Lab, Imaging ordering and tracking, generalized dynamics system, supports all specialities and departments such as Cardiac, Neuro, Onco, Gynec, ICU, OPD, Patient Management System, complete Pharmacy System, Inter-Department Interface, Lab Information System. Other components include Clinical system, Support for other departments, Patient billing information with one mouse click, Healthcare User Management, ensures many Services as a Single System, by avoiding duplicated databases , cost, and user confusion and great care for cancer therapy related interactions (www.sulekhab2b.com).
We have also searched for another product worth fitting for our clinical study. This is known as ClinAxys® II. It a reliable to enable clinical pathology laboratory information. It includes the following features like entry and editing of study protocol information, specimen tracking, Speed access to accurate information, rapid data entry with bar-coded label production. Our pathology department faces problems to incorporate changes when a new challenge arises. This could be better handled by this software which has a user-friendly interface, the ability to add modules as requirements change. As the hospital likes to keep in touch with other laboratories, the mentioned software has this capability to enable this task by making multiple global laboratories running on a single database.
In view of the above information, it can be concluded that there is need to translate the research evidence into implementable products to meet our hospital’s challenging requirements. The administrative staff and management are growing restive with the old tools that often interrupt the routine services and delay the information dissemination system. Especially, patient queries have been falling on deaf ears at the registration desk due to ever growing number of visits. Now, the tools to be implemented have been searched. This repeated white paper request could raise hopes and brings forth a positive indication from the funding agency.
The utility of a multifaceted imaging technology in the pathology department could efficiently enable the management of multimedia electronic healthcare records that includes data and images. The rate of errors that were at peak levels at this department could be better minimized with the rapid adoption of this technology. As our hospital is having a multi- bed facility, we are hopeful that the patients could enjoy the services when implemented. It is time for the corporate management to visit our hospital to gain further insights of pathetic condition faced by the patient and health care professionals.
References
- Anthony P Maddena. (2004). Clinical systems. Anaesthesia & intensive care medicine, 5, 412-414.
- Kisling, A., Dittel, E., Kopacek, P. (1992). Computer Aided Clinical Information System for hospitals. In Computer Aided Systems Theory — EUROCAST ’91, 585,556-565.
- Suresh Kaneria. (n.d). Hospital Clinical System. Web.
- Clinial Systems. Web.