1. Technical Field
The field of the present invention is healthcare management systems for healthcare enterprises. More specifically, the present invention relates to providing software applications for use by healthcare enterprises having a plurality of facilities.
2. Background Art
Modernly, primary healthcare is often times provided by healthcare enterprises. A healthcare enterprise is a group of healthcare facilities including, for example, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and others. Healthcare enterprises can be expansive, encompassing hundreds of doctors and many geographically widely dispersed point of care facilities. Alternatively, they can be more modest in size having just a few facilities.
However, no matter what the size of the enterprise, all healthcare enterprises are coming under increased pressure to improve patient care without incurring undue additional expense. Indeed, successful healthcare enterprises must become more efficient and effective in providing patient services to remain viable. Thus, enterprises are striving to increase efficiency, while maintaining or improving patient care. For example, healthcare facilities are merging to form larger enterprises. In such a manner, the larger healthcare enterprises hope to improve efficiency through economy of scale.
Most healthcare enterprises have computer systems, and many have established local area networks within their facilities. The established computer systems typically perform a variety of particular and discrete functions. For example, a facility may have a clinical information system as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/977,522 for managing and presenting patient care management plans. The hospital may have other systems for financial and administrative functions. However, many of these established computer systems are unable to provide the information required to support healthcare enterprises in the modern managed care environment in an efficient and economical manner.
Further, each facility may have computer systems that operate differently and store information in diverse formats. Thus, information from different facilities of the same enterprise may not be readily usable by another facility within the same enterprise. For example, if a patient has been seen at two or more different facilities of an enterprise, the medical number assigned to the patient may be different for each facility. Therefore, associating a person with a complete medical record is not always readily conceivable, or in some cases even impossible using current known computerized healthcare systems.
Thus, the current computer, network, and application systems used by healthcare enterprises are incapable of providing sufficient uniform decision support with their existing computer facilities. Unfortunately, to remain viable, healthcare enterprises must upgrade their existing computer systems, and expand networks.
Such problems are made even more complex in the present merger environment. For example, merged facilities have existing medical information stored in incompatible formats. Planned economy of scale benefits can not be fully realized when data is not readily shareable between facilities. Further, healthcare practitioners from remote facilities now must have easy and efficient access to information on patients in other facilities, and even in other enterprises. For example, a practitioner requires an effective process for associating a patient with a medical file in an accurate and efficient manner. If such a positive identification can not be made, then proper medical treatment may be delayed, or worse, an incorrect treatment may be provided to the patient.
A healthcare enterprise having multiple facilities may encounter several problems when admitting a patient. For example, it would be helpful to know whether or not the patient to be admitted is a current patient or had been previously admitted at any of the facilities of the same enterprise. Since each of the facilities may be using record management features incompatible with the other facilities, there is no efficient manner to find if a patient had been previously admitted to the same enterprise.
Confidently identifying the to-be-admitted patient can be a daunting task. However, it is critical that the patient be positively associated with their true and complete medical record, if available. Such an identification task is exacerbated if the patient is unconscious. In such a manner, the person admitting the patient must rely solely on anecdotal information to establish the identity of the patient. Thus, the actual identity of the patient may not be established, or an incorrect identity made. Either way, providing treatment for the patient is difficult and may even result in harmful delays or treatment for the patient.
Once a patient has been successfully admitted to a multi-facility enterprise, then it is typical for several practitioners to become involved in providing healthcare to that patient. For example, doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, radiologists, and pharmacists are needed to implement a successful treatment plan. However, these healthcare providers may be located in separate facilities, which may be widely dispersed geographically.
In providing healthcare to a patient, it is highly desirable that a complete medical history be available to healthcare practitioners. However, in the modern healthcare environment, patients routinely are transferred to different facilities of the same enterprise. Thus, over a period of years a patient's medical record becomes fragmented and dispersed among the various facilities of an enterprise.
Therefore, in general, it would be highly desirable to have a new computerized system for more efficiently and effectively communicating patient information among the various facilities of a healthcare enterprise.
The new system further needs to be quickly and confidently installed without burdensome expense to the enterprise. It is also desirable that existing legacy applications, computers, and networks cooperate with the new system. In such a manner the enterprise preserves prior information technology investments.