Changing the General Ledger Fiscal Year Start Date, Overlake Hospital

256-bed Overlake Hospital Medical Center is the hospital of choice in Bellevue, Washington. They took on the complicated process of changing the start date of their fiscal year from October 2002 to July 2002.

After working with Meditech and several consultants, they learned that there were few hospitals that had accomplished this project. Changing the FY had the greatest impact on the Fixed Assets Module. That database contained over 40,000 records, and all of them would have to be rekeyed into a new Fixed Asset database. Resources were already stretched. Overlake realized that at two minutes per entry, it would take up to 1400 hours of data entry and quality control to populate the database. After a careful analysis, they determined that the most cost-effective and accurate way to do this was by scripting.

The preliminary work plan included evaluating scripting products, selection, then building scripts, testing and then live execution. Layne Barnes, Senior Systems Analyst at Overlake was responsible for the project. He selected three products to evaluate based on information gathered at Medical Users Software Exchange (MUSE) and via the Internet. The first was a DOS-based product that seemed too primitive to do the job. The second was a Meditech-specific solution with a strong user base and appropriate pricing. That vendor was recommended to the Capital Committee for approval, even though Barnes was not finished evaluating the third solution, Boston WorkStation. He found Boston WorkStation also had a very satisfied user base. The product was Windows-based, providing the capability to script with Meditech and with DOS-based and standard Microsoft applications. He liked that Visual Basic was the development language provided with Boston WorkStation since he was familiar with VB and trusted its robust nature. He like the integrated scripting environment that made building scripts easy and the quality of the Help files and script samples. The Capital Committee liked the idea of using scripting as a way to save time and money, but they said "no" to the vendor that had been recommended. They wanted more than a Meditech-only scripting product and were willing to pay for that flexibility. Their decision was driven by the logistics of an anticipated change to a Windows-based Materials Management System.

After studying the Help File, Script Examples and the WorkStation, Barnes was virtually self-taught. When the software arrived, he was ready to build his first script. After careful development and testing throughout, he ran all 40,000 records in TEST. The script took four days to run with only a couple of errors which were quickly corrected. He went LIVE shortly thereafter.

Overlake’s Finance Department was completely satisfied. Barnes' opinion? "Writing a complex script like this takes time and effort, but it was well worth it. Boston WorkStation paid for itself with only one use. Now we’re looking at other ways to use Boston WorkStation, including scripting from Excel into a GL batch."