Healthcare

I recently sat down with Children's Hospital Foundation's Associate Director of Online Information Systems, Ken Fonzi, to discuss their unique communication and collaboration challenges. Here's a summary of what he had to say.

Although technology continues to improve how healthcare organizations share information both within and outside their own walls, providing the right information at the right time to the right people is still often difficult.

Cabrini Health is a not-for-profit Catholic healthcare service with 3,800 employees and over 700 beds comprising of two acute care hospitals, a palliative care service, rehabilitation hospital, residential care facility, and pharmacy department.

Healthcare providers are adopting integrated enterprise applications to increase efficiency in care delivery, give clinicians access to a patient’s full health record, improve outcomes and reduce costs.  Spectrum Health System is a good example, now providing a patient’s complete electronic legal health record within 3 days of discharge, and reducing labor costs by over $2.5M annually. Plus, Spectrum’s ROI has been documented to be less than 1 year, and its 5-year ROI is estimated at over 860%.

Millions of H1N1 swine flu vaccines became available during the Fall of 2009, and while many contemplated whether or not to get the vaccine, government health officials had a different issue on their hands -- what to do with the millions of pages of healthcare forms that piled up once the shot became available.

Utilization of electronic record keeping systems is becoming increasingly predominant within the healthcare industry due to a wide range of benefits, ultimately resulting in improved quality of care and patient safety, not to mention controlled costs and time savings for healthcare providers.

Lockbox processing remains a lucrative business for financial institutions, representing billions of dollars annually in fees and interest income, plus revenues from ancillary bank treasury services. It also is a critical differentiator in a financial institution’s ability to win and retain corporate clients.

A2iA is the worldwide leading developer of cursive handwriting and machine-printed text recognition, and intelligent document classification software. With a focus on research and development, all technology is built in-house without the use of third- party engines, allowing for customization and complete control over its capabilities.

Initiated by the customer’s C-Suite as part of a five-year savings plan, the organization looked to modernize operations within its primary business unit and to automate its paper-based processes. The chosen solution was required to provide value with respect to shortened processing times and increased efficiencies, but also by delivering an ROI.

A leading business process outsourcing firm (BPO) that focuses on the healthcare space contacted A2iA regarding the automatic routing, or indexing, of medical documents, including handwritten physicians’ notes, clinical documentation, and complex requisition forms. Although the BPO was already utilizing a classification engine, they were not satisfied with its performance.

eCopy’s products make it easy to incorporate paper-based patient information into various electronic medical records (EMR) systems. During this information capture and electronic fi ling process, CEs must implement safeguards to ensure that privacy is maintained at all times.

As a business professional, you know time is a precious commodity. You constantly need to distill new concepts, evaluate options, and implement complex strategies to reach current and potential customers. When you need information, you want it in a form that can be assimilated quickly—forget the mind-numbing detail and get to the point.