Escorts Hospitals: Treating with technology

Keeping up with the mad pace of technological advancement is an uphill task. Very few hospitals in India identify IT as one of the priorities and invest the requisite amount. Escorts Heart Institute is one such, whose IT budget touches a Rs one crore high. Nidhi Srivastava writes on the hospital’s IT initiative.

The end of 20th century witnessed technology percolation at an extremely rapid pace in all industries. Healthcare industry is no different. With the advent of information technology tools like hospital information system and interactive websites that provide online facilities for all hospital formalities online have revolutionised the service parameters. Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre is one of the corporate hospitals to fall in line with enthusiasm. The complete automation exercise is aimed at supplementing its efficiency.

The IT Exercise
Stage I : The initial years of Escorts saw things like appointments, OPD billings, lab results etc. being done on FoxPro. The software also helped in ward management, research and maintenance of medical records. “However, as the hospital work progressed, the number of incoming patients increased and we started feeling that FoxPro was not a platform where we could stay,” informs M P Singh, Head, Information Technology, EHIRC.

Stage II: The next step was to develop a system on Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). “This was in 1995 and Internet had still not come in. We developed our applications on client server, and gradually revamped all the operations,” tells Singh. Hence, most of the OPD work, as appointments, billing, health packages, etc., could now be done on Oracle.

Stage III : 12-15 months later, the web era started. As E-mails and Internet chatting became the talk of the town, EHIRC too embarked upon developing its applications based on this latest web technology. So from generating in-house bills and reports, the hospital technology reached a stage where one could feed the data in one computer and retrieve it whenever and wherever required on the network. “Thus instead of being confined to just one computer, a doctor could prescribe a test as well as receive the details anywhere on the LAN (Local Area Network)” explains Singh. After accomplishing the automation task of the out-patient department, in-patient department was taken as the next mandate. Here, initially record of things like ward management and account of material consumption by the patients were the aspects to be taken care of, but gradually functionalities started being added. Pages were developed in such a way that people from far off areas could benefit from them. They could download reports, consult doctors, take appointments etc. from the existing site. However, at this juncture, authorities realised that although they had the required material, they needed an external agency to put two and two together in an interactive and dynamic manner. Iridium Interactive stepped in the picture at this point.

Where is Escorts now?
The EHIRC website, now provides an integrated platform on which different user communities of EHIRC can satisfy their information needs. EHIRC website’s navigational architecture and flow cater to individuals, corporate users, EHIRC doctors, registered patients and their kin. Any individual visiting the site can get oneself pre-registered with EHIRC in the web front by giving his personal information and contact information. Here, the patient is given a pre-registration number, which can be presented at the hospital and pay the registration fee to get patient registration number. For consultation too, an individual can book an appointment with any OPD doctor available. Patients can also set a reminder if they want to be reminded about appointments.

An e-mail reminder is sent to registered patient a day before the appointment. The time for reminder can be changed by specifying the number of days before which one wants to be reminded. There is option of receiving reminder on mobile phone through SMS. Individuals can search and choose a doctor at EHIRC by selecting a problem/ test/ procedure for which they would like to find the doctors. List of EHIRC doctors along with their profile is also available for reference. Another facility provided on the site is a progress track of a registered patient. This is done through the patient’s IPD number track patient password given at the time of his admission, in case the patient has chosen to let his kin track his progress in the registration form. The status of the patient in terms of location, processes performed as well as the ones yet to be performed on him, present condition, contact numbers, visiting hours and any instructions to be followed while visiting the patient are then provided to the kin.

The site also facilitates sending of greetings along with personalised message to the patients. The card is delivered to the patient through the web administrator. A provision of online payment of bills is another help. The kin of a patient can settle the bills of an inpatient by giving the IPD number of the patient and the “settle bills password” given to the inpatient at the time of his admission. This is done with the permission of the patient.

However, a kin can also send a request to the patient for approval to pay his bills. Something that is not common to many sites, is that EHIRC website offers services for the EHIRC doctors as well. Any member doctor can send online SMS, check his OPD appointments, inpatients, e-mails and other documents on this site. The way forward is to make available hi-tech test reports such as ECHO Cardiogram, MRI and CAT Scan online for doctors, informed MP Singh.

Escort Arms - The transformation
Besides EHIRC, other hospitals under Escort umbrella are also undergoing automation. Escorts Hospital and Research Centre, Faridabad is currently undergoing technical upgradation with Escosoft Technologies having developed their Hospital Information and Management System (HIMS). It runs on Oracle 8i RDBMS for a front end, and uses 6i for forms and reports. Its operating system runs on is Microsoft Windows platform.

The development environment ensures that HIMS has the portability and connectivity to run on virtually all standard hardware platforms, with stringent data security and easy recovery in case of a system failure. Says D J Dutta, Head- National Sales, Escosoft Technologies, “In today’s scenario, a system like this has various advantages.

Not only does it save the time wasted to admit and discharge a patient, it also optimises the time utilisation of resource people in the hospital.” Low maintenance and per patient cost, without compromising upon the quality of services provided is what a profit making hospital is looking for, and this is where the role of information technology comes in.

Hospitals/ healthcare organisations have recognised that offer HIMS based self-service are not only good for customer service, but for themselves too.

The HIMS has enabled Escort’s customers and partners in the healthcare supply chain to track more medical procedures without multiple overlapping or non-recording of relevant patient and treatment data of different departments. Also, access to business information including health and payor status, customer specific pricing, updated health and drug information as well as selection capabilities has helped the customer service teams to focus on solutions for increasing revenue.

“We are implementing this package to work out a business process strategy for the hospital. With this HIMS package we can guide the hospitals in their operations and teach them to use the software for different decisions.
Significantly, we take the responsibility to set, run, upgrade and help the hospital realign its business process.

Where required we offer consultancy too. The manpower to run the software, training and applications are also being provided by us. Mostly, development of a dynamic website would be our next step for the hospital,” informs Dutta.