Approximately 5,400 visitors and patients pass through the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ontario each day. Each year approximately 20,000 patients are admitted to hospital, and more than 66,000 patients are seen in the Emergency Department. In addition to a quality physician base, Credit Valley prides itself on a strong and innovative IT department. With a keen focus on ROI, the IT staff applies productivity improvements through technology to reduce clerical errors and deliver higher quality healthcare to its diverse customer base. This pays high dividends as clinicians can focus on provision of care and spend less time with manual tasks that can be automated.
Ensure High Quality Healthcare from the Start
Credit Valley realized it needed more efficient and adaptive patient registration processes with its current HIS from MEDITECH. The hospital was resource constrained, yet without an efficient patient registration process, the hospital risked inaccurate patient information and adverse impacts to revenue. Avril Cardoso, manager, application services at Credit Valley, discovered that by using Boston WorkStation, from Boston Software Systems, her facility could administer business rules through the effective application of technology.
Boston WorkStation (BWS) is workflow automation and integration technology that provides an environment for on-demand process innovation and development. Boston WorkStation allows healthcare organizations to dynamically respond to changing business requirements by automating common tasks, creating complex processes, automating interaction with websites, or integrating new applications, systems and devices.
Using Boston WorkStation, Credit Valley developed an improved registration workflow which applies business rules as part of the registration process. Patient address validation is also included against a postal database. Boston WorkStation, running in the background, can 'watch' the registration screen and 'see' what a user is keying in. This quickly helps users detect errors, increasing address standardization and improving data quality. Through the inventive marriage of technology and process, Credit Valley was able to automate a standardized registration process across more than 40 points of registration.
"Registration is the beginning of the healthcare process, so it is critical to ensure patient information is correct," said Cardoso. "This provides more reliable patient information which is important in maintaining the continuity of care. "
Can I Have Fries with That Registration?
The most exciting application of BWS is Credit Valley's automated patient registration process - possibly the first of its kind in North America - which Credit Valley has been piloting with great success. Patients are able to "self-register" at a kiosk in the patient care area, which helps to expedite the registration process. The hospital will soon open five kiosks in the new regional cancer center. Credit Valley will eventually install them in the outpatient and ambulatory care clinics, where the hospital sees the most volume of patients in a short period of time.
Without a keyboard, a patient can scan his/her health card at a wall-mounted computer (soon to be a kiosk). The hospital system deploys a real-time network-to-network connection with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to ensure the patient's identity and validate the card. If they are in sync, the system automatically signs the patient into the MEDITECH Admissions Module and delivers paperwork to the registration desk. If the card is not valid, the system displays a message instructing the patient to see a registration clerk, who will assist them. The transaction takes 30 seconds. Credit Valley has achieved proof-of-concept on this device through a unanimous affirmation by the key stakeholders.
As a result of using Boston Software Systems' workflow automation and scripting software, The Credit Valley Hospital has greatly improved its registration processes, saving time, increasing accuracy and revenue recovery and ultimately improving patient care.
"The Credit Valley Hospital implemented Boston WorkStation to improve and automate processes," said Cardoso. "The Boston WorkStation suite of software is helping us to automate the application of business rules during the registration workflow. It is also being used as one of the application components, to deliver automated patient registration to streamline this workflow and offer better service. The Credit Valley Hospital will also become one of the first hospitals in Canada to implement address validation and residence postal code cross-reference. We will explore every opportunity to deliver safer and higher quality service to our patients," said Cardoso.
