A Patient eSignature Case Study
Galway Clinic
Electronic information is available to clinicians in real time which enhances patient care
Introduction
The Galway Clinic is situated on the outskirts of Galway City in Doughiska and opened to provide health care services in 2004. It was the first independently funded hospital to be opened in Ireland in 20 years
It has 146 in-patient beds—eight of which are ICU beds and the remaining 138 are on five in-patient units. There is a same-day surgery unit and emergency room. Galway Clinic also has seven operating suites, an endoscopy suite, a catheterization laboratory and an oncology day unit.
Galway Clinic is widely recognized as one of the most-forward thinking healthcare facilities. It was the first hospital in Ireland to achieve HIMSS Stage 6 for EMR adoption, and was also the first European facility to go live with MEDITECH’s 6.x EHR platform. In keeping with this commitment to improving patient care and service through advanced technology, Galway Clinic’s leadership team is continually looking for systems that advance its transition to fully electronic patient records.
As such, Galway Clinic recognized that it had numerous third-party medical devices and clinical systems that were still generating paper output and unable to share this information digitally with MEDITECH’s 6.x EHR. Needless to say, it was challenging to get this paper-based output into electronic patient records. “We had to print reports and then scan and index them, which was very time-consuming,” said Raphael Jaffrezic, Chief Information Officer at Galway Clinic.
PATIENT ESIGNATURE Case Study Highlights
- Clinical device and system output sent into MEDITECH’s EHR without paper or human intervention.
- Electronic information is available to clinicians in real time, enhancing patient care.
- Switching to Access Passport not only provides signature capture, but also web-based eForms.
- Clinicians and patients apply eSignatures at the same time, enforcing standards.
- Tight integration enables seamless, secure document viewing from web browsers and mobile devices.
Quick Facts
Location: Galway, Ireland
EHR: MEDITECH Expanse
Focus: Electronic health records, clinical output integration
Departments: Hospital-wide
Access solutions: Intelligent eForms, Electronic Signatures and Enterprise Integration and Process Automation (Workflow)
Extending the EMR by Integrating Clinical Output
Galway Clinic looked for a technology partner who could plug these gaps, and turned to Access, the leading provider of electronic forms, electronic signatures and clinical data integration solutions.
Access’s clinical data bridge captures output from virtually any medical device or clinical system that can generate a PDF. It then standardizes the data and sends it into the correct patient’s electronic health record with all the appropriate document IDs and other supporting information. The data is then immediately usable to doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals across the hospital.
So far, Galway Clinic has successfully integrated this paperless solution with its consultant suites online booking application and endoscopy, ICU and urology systems.
“Access’s solution is the missing link between medical devices, clinical systems and our EHR,” Jaffrezic said. “It enables us to continue the flow of electronic information.”
Improving Information Availability and Saving Time
Staff members at Galway Clinic used to go through a manual, paper-intensive process to get output from clinical devices and systems into patient records — scanning and manually indexing each page. That’s a thing of the past thanks to Access’s system, which has removed both paper and effort from the equation.
“Access’s solution reduces the human time required for scanning and handling paper,” Jaffrezic said. “Our staff likes how clean the solution is and the fact that it integrates fully into MEDITECH Scanning and Archiving — it’s not just document links.”
Another benefit that Access provides is the speed at which clinical information is presented electronically to clinicians. Previously, paper output was made available but could take some time before the electronic versions appeared in the EMR. Now, system and device output is available instantly from anywhere in the hospital, which improves the timeliness of patient care and service.
“Before, we could have waited a number of days before a report from one of those thirdparty systems was available in our electronic medical record,” Jaffrezic said. “Now we get it in real time. Access’s system has certainly made clinical information more readily available.”
Galway Clinic has successfully integrated 304,000 clinical documents into MEDITECH’s 6.x EHR since deploying Access’s clinical data bridge. During months with peak activity, more than 18,000 documents are sent from clinical devices and systems through the Access solution and into patient records — without a single page being printed or employees performing any manual tasks.
“Access’s solution is the missing link between medical devices, clinical systems and our EHR. It enables us to continue the flow of electronic information.”
Raphael Jaffrezic
Galway Clinic Chief Information Officer
Looking to the Future with Web-Based Forms and Electronic Patient Signatures
Galway Clinic also is extending its partnership with Access to improve electronic forms and patient signature management. When the IT/IS team heard from its previous vendor that they were sunsetting the electronic signatures application and that Galway Clinic would be required to purchase a new solution, they decided to switch to Access’s e-signatures.
“Once Jaffrezic and his team had further explored the capabilities of Access’s product suite, they also selected Access Passport, a full-featured, web-based forms solution that enables hospitals to manage all their forms electronically in one place.”
“Access Passport will help us electronically manage forms across the facility — from patient-focused areas to finance, HR and other administrative departments, Jaffrezic said. “It will make all our documents available online and will help us improve our workflows.”
Another key decision point was Access’s proven integration with MEDITECH’s 6.x EHR platform. This gave Galway Clinic confidence that e-forms and e-signatures would be readily available via MEDITECH.
Conclusion
Value of a Meditech Vendor Focused on Solving Problems
“Access Passport has very strong integration with MEDITECH and makes it easy to get forms and signatures into patient’s electronic records,” he said. “Access and MEDITECH are the perfect combination for any hospital that wants an integrated EHR instead of separate information siloes.”
