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Process Flow
MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) is currently comprised of
three treatment facilities, equipped with 14 linear accelerators
used to treat over 400 patients a day. Add to these treatments,
appointments for consultations, image studies, and other types
of patient visits and the staff is responsible for scheduling
nearly 600 appointments a day. At a center this busy, any
improvements in process flow contribute significantly to the
center’s ability to maintain a high level of care for the large
number of patients it services. Since 1996, MD Anderson has used
the IMPAC system to streamline their processes. This year they
incorporated IMPAC’s wireless solution to give clinicians
real-time access to patient records.
Time Savings
At MDACC, IMPAC provides a central database of schedules,
patient records, images and quality assurance data. With the
recent addition of IMPAC’s wireless functionality, MD Anderson
has significantly improved department efficiency by providing
staff members with wireless carts equipped with pen tablets and
laptop computers. “Locating hard copies of charts is an immense
time waster, but providing sufficient computer access to the
electronic medical record is also difficult in a center our
size. By applying wireless technology, clinicians can easily
enter and access data at the point-of-care, and that data is
immediately available throughout our entire network. This has
resulted in a huge saving in time and resources,” said Erdal
Sipahi, the radiation oncology division’s manager of system
analyst services at MD Anderson.
The Wireless Approach
So far, MD Anderson has used wireless technology primarily for
entering and reviewing charting data, but they recognize the
potential of using it to review medical images. Sipahi added,
“Wireless technology is improving everyday and will continue to
improve. IMPAC’s image management system has already enabled us
to eliminate the two-day time lag between portal image
acquisition and review. Our objective is to continue to develop
the wireless approach to include not just charts and records but
images too. We believe that all patient information – data and
images – should be available at the point-of-care, wherever and
whenever that might be.”
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MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Erdal
Sipahi accesses patient information from anywhere in MDACC. |
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