i.Patient Manager (i.PM) is an established and proven integrated enterprise wide patient management solution that allows every aspect of a patient’s journey through the hospital to be managed and tracked within a single system. Over 100 sites across the globe including sites in UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, China and Malaysia, rely on i.PM to deliver safe, efficient and effective patient management administration.

i.PM supports a multi site approach, allowing a healthcare provider to install a single solution across multiple sites in a quick and efficient manner, enabling clinicians to view the facility level and the individual site level making tracking patients a far easier and quicker process.

From a central booking facility users of i.PM are able to add a patient to a waiting list and then go onto book further appointments central to the patients overall care. This is an example of how i.PM can be tailored  to work with patient flows designed by trust’s to meet individual business requirements.

Key Benefits

With the presence of a Patient Master Index, patient records are stored in a central location which can be accessed by any health professional with the required rights. As demographic information is entered centrally, this will reduce the repeated questioning of patients and also reduce the number of opportunities of inputting errors and data discrepancies. Once information has been recorded on the PMI it will be available throughout all areas of the system based on highly configurable user rights options.

• more direct nursing time spent with patients: i.PM enables patient data to be accessible immediately on screen, so reducing the amount of time spent searching for information, resulting in more time  to focus on direct nursing
• integrated approach to complete administrative healthcare management solution that adopts a common user interface which reduces training times and empowers departmental co-operation
• ensuring patient safety. Safe clinical treatment of any given patient relies on the information held being particular and pertinent to that patient. As the delivery of patient care is now often shared across a number of clinical areas and providers, safe delivery of  care relies upon accuracy of patient information. The latest version of i.PM fully supports the recent statutory requirements outlined in DSCN 32/2008, ensuring that verified NHS numbers are prominently displayed on all screen headers, reports and patient wristbands
• designed with healthcare ‘partners’ which follows actual health business flows and can be configured to support the various healthcare settings
• totally integrated billing and reimbursement features meaning costs are captured at source as part of standard business flows
• provides the tools and focus for efficient administrative workflows which in turn results in an associated reduction in administrative running costs
• faster access to current and historic episodic information: results in improved and accelerated data access of relevant patient information
• reduced patient duplication: data entered on admission screen will be pulled through to transfer and discharge screens to cut down on duplication and user error
• better management of beds: i.PM’s integrated inpatient waiting list and bed management modules support the overall bed management function. Bed availability is reflected on the Waiting List and when a patient is discharged the bed situation is immediately updated
• integrates with our other solutions, Microsoft or third party systems using industry standards such as XML and HL7 messaging systems to provide a central repository of patient details helping to provide a number of benefits:

            o reduces the need to re-enter similar data
            o improves the accuracy of data across the healthcare enterprise
            o reduces hard disk storage space by eliminating duplicate copies of the same data
            o reduces the time it takes to create a new episode
            o ensures that patient data is available at the point of need.

 

Solution Overview

Outpatient Management

Outpatient management within the i.Patient Manager solution offers a comprehensive set off scheduling options to assist staff in booking a range of appointments including:

• single appointment - a one off outpatient attendance
• linked appointment - the booking of multiple appointments on one day for different clinics/carers/specialties from a single point saving the hospital and the patient time and effort
• multiple appointments - allows the booking of regular appointments over a specified period of time from a single point.

Session management allows the publication of a calendar of availability and allow the definition of various types of clinics. Rules can be assigned at slot, session and clinic levels to provide the user with a flexible and powerful tool from which to define their clinic requirements. Sessions can incorporate C&B only slots which are easily identifiable and can be configured to automatically open up to local bookings at a pre-configured time.

A range of reports will be provided supporting both operational and management aspects of outpatient services. The relevant CDS extracts are supported.

Inpatient Management

The admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) module is fully integrated with all other functionality supporting transactions from waiting list, outpatients and A&E while also integrating with modules dependent on the discharge outcome of the inpatient stay. It can be used to co-ordinate all admissions, internal and inter-institutional transfers and discharges from the institution. In this way a real time accurate picture of the current inpatients status can be maintained.

Registrations

As already mentioned the solution is integrated and therefore accesses the central Master Patient Index when a patient search is carried out as part of an admission, transfer or discharge.

Using ADT's

The inpatient functionality can be configured in three separate ways, the three options of how to configure ADT's are:

• Ward management - This allows patients to be admitted to a ward without having to specify the projected bed category or the actual bed category for the patient
• Ward management/bed category - This option allows wards to have beds attached to specialties and enables the hospital to capture the projected and actual bed category for the patient. This is particularly useful in recording private and public bed categories
• Real time bed management - This option allows the hospital to define the actual number of beds attached to each ward and actually admit patients into actual beds. However, to enable this option the hospital must have 24 hour staff to do ADT's; in addition to that admissions cannot be made until beds are free.
  

Ward Management

The ward view functionality enables users to view information relating to the patients that are currently occupying the wards and planned events for those wards such as admissions, discharges and transfers and the times of the transactions that are planned for a specified date. Features of ward management include:

• one step process for transferring, discharging and updating patient ward details
• ability to use and hold beds for home leave, or ITU stay
• process to derive TCI and discharge letters

Admissions

• Admissions can be sourced from other modules of the solution such as outpatients, A&E and waiting lists. Wherever the admission has originated from the same information is needed to admit the patient such as ward, clinician, specialty and other administrative details such as management intention. The user can also make planned admissions by entering a future date for the admission. The solution also supports patients being admitted as ward attendances
• in addition to the patient being admitted to the ward it is also possible for a lodger to be admitted. The only condition on this functionality is that the lodger is attached to the patient record as a personal carer.

Home Leave

• the solution supports the recording and management of home leave for patients.
  

Transfers

• once a patient has been admitted to a ward it is possible to transfer the patient. This means that a patient can be transferred to another ward, to another consultant or they can be transferred home for a home leave stay. As with admissions it is possible to make a planned transfer by adding a future date to the transfer.

Discharges

• discharges can be accessed by either highlighting the patient in the occupancy view and utilising the right mouse or by viewing the ward events tab. Both methods display the same screen, on this screen are all the relevant details for discharging the patient. Any information that can be defaulted in from the admission process is populated
• once all the relevant details are entered such as the date and times of actual and medical discharges the outcome and destination are required. If the solution is configured to do so it links to other modules dependant on the value selected as an outcome of the inpatient stay. If the outcome is that a follow-up appointment is to be booked the system automatically displays the appointment booking module and the waiting list if a value of waiting list is entered as the outcome.

Outputs

• the use of standard enquiries, reports and third party reporting tools allows report/query and ad hoc enquiry generation from data maintained in it. Such information can be used and accessed in order to aid and support the hospital management in managing and planning the usage of staff. Other standard outputs include admission and discharge documentation as well as patient labels. The relevant CDS extracts are supported including 18 week wait information requirements.

Patient Record Enquiry

Overview of patient history provides the user with an view of all patient activity including outpatient, inpatient stays, referrals, contacts, theatre visits, A&E.

Referral Management

i.Patient Manager is an integrated solution and therefore once referral information has been recorded for a patient this can be accessed throughout the solution and referenced against all required activity. Referrals can be received electronically either via HL7 messages or in a standard format via a web service.  Appointments made via Choose & Book will automatically have an associated referral created and linked to the booking.

The latest version of i.Patient Manager is also fully compliant with 18 week wait requirements. Pathways will be automatically initiated based on user definable criteria and will be updated via event driven links
A range of reports will be provided supporting both operational and management aspects of referral management. The relevant CDS extracts are supported including 18 week wait information requirements.

Patient Document Tracking (PDT)

The i.Patient Manager solution supports the electronic tracking of casenotes throughout the hospital and provides a detailed audit trail of all requests and receipts of the casenotes between departments. It can be used to allocate a unique number/volume number to each patient file and maintain an historical view of all volume numbers/unique identifiers allocated to each individual patient. 

The solution allows for manual entry or, a far more efficient method, using a standard bar code scanner, of any requests for patient medical files singly or in bulk. The solution also allows for certain defined groupings of patient files to be requested by their inclusion in a list, such as all patients on a clinic or all those being admitted on a specific date.

Document Management (WinDiP)

i.Patient Manager incorporates WINDiP a highly flexible Document Management system that allows patient documents to be stored in context with the patients PAS record. Documents can be stored in a tree structure based on document type and can be amended, depending on user rights. A full version history can be stored with the documents to provide an audit trail.

Patient Documents

• clinical documents stored as part the patient record
• predefined Word templates with mail merge facility to populate documents with data held in the record, reducing the need for duplicate data entry
• new functionality, available through Ad-Hoc mergefield feature, to allow users to create their own mergefields on the fly
• read only format for finalised documents
• ability to use WinDIP as an integrated document management tool
• compatible with MS Office.

Patient Kiosks - Savience

Highly configurable, multi-language patient kiosks which offer outpatient attendees self service kiosks were they can quickly and efficiently check into busy clinics, improving the patient’s journey through the hospital and also improving the patient’s hospital experience.

 
The use of the self service kiosks also free up the receptionists time to deal with follow-up appointments and changes to patient demographics which can be triggered via the patient indicating a change on the kiosk screen.

Theatre Management

The i.Patient Manager functionality enables data capture based on the business requirement which will allow effective management of theatre usage and all theatre activity from scheduling patient to returning back to the ward. It enables theatre managers to fully utilise the theatres and to control setting up the correct durations based on consultant timings.

Features of the system include:
• in-theatre details to be captured
• correct coding of procedure carried out to be automatically posted from theatre
• ease of use when closing or setting up add hoc theatre sessions
• business information retrieval of theatre utilisation.

Billing

The i.Patient Manager billing suite comprises of system generated charge accounts created by key activity points in the system.  A set of rules or an algorithm translates the terms of the business and will drive automatic posting of charges where an activity results in a service charge, such as diagnostic imaging requests, accommodation fees, charges due to extended length of stay etc. The rules will reference the relevant patient, service and organisation information to determine the appropriate action. 

In addition to the rules based algorithm  payment agreements are set up to manage the specific purchaser contracts with the organisation. Payment agreements can be created to determine, price per service whether this is item based pricing or fixed price packages, whether an overall excess or cap is applicable and assign the excess or amount above a cap to a secondary payer. Charges can be posted automatically from the payment agreements based on logical conditions, such as supplementary charges when a specific service is provided. Payment agreements can be created on a commissioning basis where the count of patients up to a capped quantity is the requirement or an annual agreed contract by price for services between the organisation and the purchaser.

• Features of the system include:

        Contracts to manage third party terms for:

• single fixed price packages
• fixed rate packages
• count of patient
• automatic posting of pre-defined charges
• bar code scanning for charging to accounts
• integrated posting of charges from theatres, pharmacy and radiology departments
• provision for technical fees and fee splits to accommodate third party payments on specified services
• overnight posting of bed fees
• automatic generation of invoices

Other Benefits

i.PM can be installed via thick or thin client using web technologies, in order to reach out to outlying provider units as well as main hospital sites at a reduced total cost of ownership

The solution meets NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) technical and functional compliance in line with Monitor Guidance Document 'Guidance for NHS Foundation Trusts on Co-operating with the National Programme for Information Technology', in particular the ability to allow patients or NHS professionals to directly book appointments via the Choose & Book service.

i.Patient Manager is wholly based on Microsoft technologies. Its open architecture (enhanced by the adoption of XML and HL7 standards), allow it to seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Office and to bring together information from other systems to build an integrated patient record

LDAP – Active directory. Control access to i.Patient Manager via windows login. Simplifies security by controlling all users at one level

 

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