Galway Clinic achieved HIMSS Stage 6 with T-Pro

Background

Galway Clinic is a state-of-the-art, 146-bed hospital, based in the west of Ireland. There are in excess of 140 highly skilled clinicians and surgeons covering a wide variety of specialities. 

Galway Clinic has never shied away from embracing the latest technology and was the first hospital worldwide to introduce a hybrid operating theatre. Leveraging the latest technology, Galway Clinic has earned the status as one of the most digitally sophisticated hospitals in Europe, after successfully re-validating their Stage 6 HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) status.

Challenge

To achieve HIMSS Stage 6, Galway Clinic needed to meet certain requirements including the implementation of electronic medical documentation and a full electronic medical record. At this time, Galway Clinic was also in the process of transitioning from a paper-based system to MEDITECH Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. The hospital would need to eliminate any remaining paper-based procedures within the clinic. One proposed way of solving this issue was to adopt using IT-based solutions to support clinicians and in so doing, increase the general efficiency of their daily work flow.

The hospital insisted the solution came from a proven supplier with enough skill and resources to manage a major project, with technology designed for both current and future healthcare needs. It was specified that the chosen technology be fully operational and achieve an immediate high level of end-user satisfaction.

Solutions

Galway Clinic chose T-Pro to provide an affordable, scalable, and securely robust central Digital Dictation & Speech Recognition platform to improve the speed, accuracy and quality of clinical documentation.

T-Pro digital transformation team worked closely with Galway Clinic to co-design an enterprise-wide solution for clinical documentation workflow improvement. After further assessing the hospital’s workflow requirements, the transformation team relayed relevant feedback and recommendations to management, ensuring that current and future performance indicators were met (including 1-hour turnaround for progress notes) and that the new system would deliver the desired improvements.

T-Pro, now in place since 2013, complements existing EHR workflows through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface and secure data transmission, that incorporates functionality to boost clinician productivity and work more flexibly. Clinicians can manage dictations, prioritise their work, and access and report on patient information, all while using their preferred mobile device. T-Pro's integration with MEDITECH EHR allows clinicians to select from a live patient list on their smartphone or tablet device. Dictations can be uploaded anywhere, anytime, with patients identified and demographics attached, ensuring document accuracy and accelerating the transcription process. With options to route work directly to one or more designated secretaries, outsourced transcription or speech recognition for transcription, clinicians have the power of choice in their hands.

• Using a smartphone or tablet, clinicians dictate directly from a pre-generated clinic list, meaning each dictation is automatically and correctly tagged per patient.
• The sound file is then routed securely to T-Pro's back-end speech recognition which convert clinicians dictations to text.
• Integration with MEDITECH EHR allows for patient demographic information to automatically populate templates, ensuring document accuracy, and accelerating the transcription process.
• On completion of the editing stage, the work is submitted back to the clinician who can rapidly check and electronically sign/approve documents via web or mobile.
• The final step then includes some intelligent document routing and interfacing with EHR.
• Real-time and historic reports and metrics provide management with a comprehensive overview of documentation workflow, work levels, costs, and adherence to SLA's.

"T-Pro’s mobile solution means I can dictate and approve documents without being tied to a desk. Ultimately I spend more time caring for patients and less on administration."

Ronan Kavanagh
Consultant Rheumatologist, Galway Clinic

Benefits

Since the introduction of T-Pro, there has been a 54% increase in compliance notes and 90% of all progress notes are captured electronically. This has resulted in an increase in the overall quality and quantity of data being captured. There has been a significant increase in clinician engagement and satisfaction, as clinicians can capture the patient story away from their desk and 'at the point of care'. Clinicians are notified when the transcription is complete and can review and approve the document on their mobile device, which is then automatically saved to the EHR.

T-Pro also built and created a bespoke mobile dictation app, “GC Dictate”, to allow the hospital to speech enable their EHR workflows, and maintain a single brand entity, which incorporates their branding and allows for a richer user experience.

More patients can now be seen by clinicians by accelerating charting and minimising unnecessary screen time. By streamlining clinical documentation, T-Pro is an essential, integrated extension to the hospital's EHR solution that clinicians use to be more productive every day.