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A large and complex institution such as the University of
Washington (UW) in Seattle, which comprises two teaching
hospitals and a hospital-based cancer center, is bound to have
unique needs. According to Rodney Schmidt, MD, PhD, UW faculty
member since 1987 and director of medical informatics for the
department of pathology, “We place a high premium on purchasing
products that are open and extensible, which was a primary
reason we selected PowerPath®. While it covers the essentials
for a pathology lab, it also makes it easy for us to
write new applications that quickly address a number of
situations,” he explained.
UW developed an application to work with PowerPath that
calculates modifiers and multipliers for CPT codes. This has not
only saved the pathology laboratory a tremendous amount of time
and money that would have been needed for manual coding but has
also increased coding reliability that, in turn, has resulted in
more accurate billing and reimbursement. First-submission
compliance with government requirements has reduced the time
previously spent on review and resubmission of disapproved
items.
Efficient Reporting
Pathologists and transcriptionists at UW used to type
immunohistochemical (IHC) results directly into the final
pathology reports. It was necessary to remember the 8-10
antibodies run on a case, type them in by hand, and type in the
results. All this effort produced a document that was
human-readable but the IHC results couldn’t be retrieved easily
for research, quality assurance, or teaching purposes. Now, UW
uses an extension to PowerPath that lets users specify IHC
results by clicking on a form. The results are written to the
pathology report and also added to a searchable database for
future electronic retrieval. Now, what used to take a
transcriptionist 15 minutes to type is completed in less than a
minute. “When we want certain cases for research or teaching,”
said Schmidt, “all we need to do is choose the IHC results and
the software instantly finds the cases.”
Automatic Tracking
UW also built a tool to transmit pathology reports to an
electronic medical record (EMR) as PDF files. Once PDFs are
generated, the tool automatically queries PowerPath for patient
names, record numbers, and other relevant information, and sends
them off for filing in the EMR. The most recent addition to UW’s
PowerPath toolbox is a module that tracks slides and tissue
blocks stored in offsite archives. Noted Schmidt, “Boxes of
blocks contain 1000 or 2000 samples; manual entry into PowerPath
would be too laborious, so we built a tool to do it
automatically. Once entered, block location can be tracked
within PowerPath using the built-in tools.”
Long-term Benefits
Schmidt added “No matter how good the system, some customers
will have needs that aren’t supplied. Fortunately, PowerPath’s
open system makes it easy for us to address our present and
future needs.” |
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University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Members of the pathology department at the University of
Washington includes
(L-R): Phil Nguyen, Rosy Changchien, Victor Tobias, Rodney
Schmidt, MD, and Kevin Fleming |
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