Intranet Portal for Psychiatric Hospital Patient Management
A hospital capacity tracking system continues to prove that simple, efficient
technology solutions can greatly increase our human abilities every day.
"[We] suddenly cannot imagine how to work without [it]."
Analysis
The Zurich Canton in Switzerland has several acute-care psychiatric hospitals
through which physicians rotate. Patients are typically sent to the nearest hospital,
but they may be admitted to another hospital if the nearest one is full. The
physicians needed a way to track the patient load at each hospital and set priorities
so they knew where they were needed most and where to place new patients.
Implementation
In coordination with Intertreck, we built
an intranet portal that signals an immediate "Priority" indicator to help the
physicians determine which hospital most needs their services. This priority level
is calculated from a heuristic based on several characteristics of the hospital
data.
We provided additional detailed reports of bed usage so the physicians could
quickly determine characteristics of the capacity and decide where to place new
patients. We also developed an in-take/out-take feature so that hospital workers could
keep the system up to date. Finally, we added several administrative functions for
audit-tracking, adjustments and management.
Results
The physicians reported a significant improvement in business process management,
and they are more effective in providing their services where they are needed most.
After two year of continuous usage, the physicians requested that we extend the
program to include the geriatric-care hospitals as well. Our partner reported that
"the doctors suddenly cannot imagine how to work without [it]."
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