Date Added: 7/31/2009
Posted by:
 birdie
 supporthitug.org

Author/Source:
 StatSchedules Technologies

Viewed: 3000 times

StatSchedules Patient Portal is a personalized web-based portal that provides patients with a secure web-based access to information and services like scheduling, viewing of lab results and reviewing and paying bills online. StatSchedules Patient Portal has been developed utilizing state-of-the-art Java technologies and an open communications platform that enables customers to integrate their back-end legacy system quickly and effectively.

Patient Portals in general are implemented successfully if they are part of both a clinical and an IT strategy. StatSchedules Patient Portal has a unique advantage; it can integrate with any Hospital Information system(HIS) for patient information. Patients are given the ability to review and update their information online. Hospital administration staff then receive the updated record electronically which they can then merge into their Hospital Information system(HIS).

Sharing of patient information between the portal and scheduling system is very difficult and requires extensive integration between the two systems. StatSchedules provides both solutions off  the shelf. The portal is tightly integrated with the StatScheduler, an enterprise-wide scheduler with central scheduling capabilities.

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Benefits of StatSchedules Patient Portal to patients

StatSchedules Patient Portal enables a patient to:

          • Maintain personal and family health details that is accessible anywhere 24/7
          • Request/Schedule appointments for Outpatient services on line from provider services
          • Complete Pre-Admit forms from home.
          • Review accounts and pay bills on line
          • Review Lab, CT and MRI reports online.
         • Review specific instructions associated with the requested services.

Patients receive emails from the Patient Portal providing them the status of their appointment/request. All information on the email is encoded to protect patient privacy.

Patients have to be authenticated first before viewing their own information online. This prevents any un-authorized access to confidential patient information. The authentication process is fairly simple; patients have to enter their username, password and date of birth to gain access.

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Benefits of StatSchedules Patient Portal to providers

StatSchedules Patient Portal assists a provider with:

          • Reduced phone calls into the facility and incoming paperwork like billing etc.
          • Minimize redundant data entry error and accurately capture patient demographics
          • Access to vital patient information especially when a patient is not responsive and require immediately attention.

On an average during the tax season a hospital could receive 3000+ calls from patients enquiring about what they spend during the last year, a clear indication on the importance of having this information readily available to patients online.

Benefits of role based access model in patient portals

StatSchedules Patient Portal provides patients and providers easy access to patient information. The diagram below shows the various roles that can access a patient's information on the patient portal. Apart from the patient itself immediate family (like spouse, children, grandchildren) OR legal representatives can have access to the patient portal and view/update the patient information online provided they have the correct patient credentials. This is very useful in the event a patient is unresponsive and requires immediate medical attention; having his/her patient information available online and accessible can help health providers take informed decision about the patient's care.

Primary care givers (like physicians, family doctors), administration staff as well as specialists can easily access their patient information as all this information is integrated with their own Hospital Information System (HIS).

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ROI and StatSchedules Patient Portal

Hospitals can realize great benefits from implementing any Patient Portal. Not only has patient portals reduced the number of non medical related inquiries received by hospital staff; it has also empowered patients to take control of their own healthcare information. There are several patient portals in the market today but the advantage of going with StatSchedules Patient Portal is the flexibility it offers. It can easily integrate with the Scheduler(another Statschedules product); and it can be easily integrate into any hospital environment with minimum customization.

Administration of the portal from IT perspective at the hospitals requires a basic understanding of web servers and database servers.

The portal just requires a licensed copy of web server and a database server preferably MS SQL Server. There may be some interfacing work that may be required to integrate the hospitals existing scheduling server and email servers as added functionality.

Presently the StatSchedules Patient Portal is being extended to provide other services like integration with existing prescription refill programs, financial systems, and Physician portals.

Road Map:

Integration with Google Health / Microsoft Health Vault: Using patient portal and the physician portal products from StatSchedules Technologies Inc, data will be exported to Patient Health Records maintained at popular data repository sites like Google Health and Microsoft Health vault. This will help the users to organize data in one place and be able to access the record any where and every where. This is a huge benefit in minimizing the medical errors and duplicate tests.

Integrating with EMR Systems at Physician's Offices: Patient demographics, allergies, history, encounters, medical history can be exchanged with EMR systems at the referring, consulting and ordering physician offices in standard formats like HL7, CCR and CCD. This will help in minimizing the data entry errors and save a lot of waiting time at the offices in doing the paper work.

References

For more Information on StatSchedules patient portal and other solutions go to: http://www.statschedules.com/enterpriseSchedulingSolutions.html

For more information on StatSchedules go to http://www.statschedules.com