Cooperation with systems’ vendor aids provider
Hospital wanted integrated statistical information
Sometimes to get what you want you have to participate in the process. One hospital in Canada took this approach when it began a search for a way to integrate statistical and financial information and make it available in a desktop computer system.
"I wanted a way to put that information on the desktop for managers, rather than creating a huge paper-based system that would never be able to integrate the two properly or deliver information on a timely, actionable time frame," says Eric MacDonald. He is assistant executive director of St. Joseph’s General Hospital in Comox, British Columbia, Canada.
St. Joseph’s is a Catholic-based hospital with 230 beds — 100 in acute care and 130 dedicated to long-term care patients; it serves a community of 60,000. The $40 million annual budget includes an off-site facility managed by the hospital, 40 general practitioners, and a total of approximately 70 on the medical staff.
A few years after beginning his search, Mac-Donald contacted Ormed Information Systems Ltd., a health care information systems company based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. St. Joseph’s licensed Ormed’s PRESTO suite of integrated programs, but MacDonald and other users were given the opportunity to provide feedback on further refining the software. Now MacDonald can see the impact of the suggestions he and others on the St. Joseph’s staff have made.
"The PRESTO Discovery product is something that came out of suggestions that we initially made to Ormed about how [information] might be presented to a user," MacDonald says. The product allows department managers to access their own data and the executive team to access statistical and financial reports on-line. With the help of computerized "wizards," they can also define and run their own summary cost center reports.
MacDonald says he now handles all his budgeting with department heads in their offices, on-line. "I turn the [computer] screen around so we can both see it, and we look at a template we’ve written that will take the year-to-date information from the current fiscal year projected out to year end." Department heads add their price and volume assumptions, and they can run a budget for the department or cost center in five minutes.
With the software, MacDonald has been able to use the same number of accounting staff since 1991. Then, the staff was working only for one hospital; now they do the accounting for a regional laundry, a nursing home, and a foundation. "The reporting we do has increased four-fold since 1991. In addition, in terms of dollars, the budget has grown by roughly 20%. Both of these increases have taken place without adding staff," he adds.
Managing the materials
MacDonald isn’t the only person at St. Joseph’s who saw his comments incorporated into the software product. Dave Higgs, materials manager for St. Joseph’s, struggled with keeping track of contracts.
"In the product suite, there is a program called contract management. That product [evolved from] a conversation I had with Ormed about the need for an additional module that would allow me to track my contracts more easily," Higgs says. The system now imports electronic vendor responses for comparative analysis and for the automatic update of related materials management files.
The software enables Higgs to maximize his time. "I have the ability to place orders, place them fast, and have the receiving done accurately." In addition, St. Joseph’s integrated inventory sales with the billing and accounts receivable programs. "The invoice is paid and cleared quickly," he says.
The system also has the ability to "drill down" into St. Joseph’s financial data, says Sandra Pentland, manager of accounting services. She oversees the accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger. The drill-down feature allows the user to find out the details of a given accounting entry.
"You get at the top level of an accounting entry, and you keep drilling into it — even into the subsystem it’s coming from — until you get down to an invoice number, a name, or a time card. It saves you the time of running back and forth to the file cabinet to look up a vendor," she adds.
The general ledger is built the same way. "One of the biggest adjustments we’ve done in the last couple of years is that we’ve combined everything," Pentland says. "I can go from doing checks for one facility into [doing them for] another facility. That saves a lot of time, instead of having to close down one program and going into another program." The software uses a well-established platform (Novell or NT) and has been stable ever since it was first implemented, says Yokee Wong, director of biomedical engineering and information. "When a problem or glitch does present itself, it usually takes more time for people to log off than it does for me to fix the problem.
MacDonald is pleased with the progress St. Joseph’s has made. "We have discovered ways of eliminating the paper-based reporting system and connecting managers to interactive tools that reveal both the path ahead for the organization and our progress down that path."
The hospital continues to work with Ormed on its software products. MacDonald and his staff are now using and providing feedback on E-PRESTO, software that is Web-enabled and database independent.
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