Barwon Health

Barwon Health is Victoria's largest regional health care provider. Through their extensive range of services and programs Barwon Health provides general and specialist hospital and community services for over 90% of the Geelong community and to an increasing number of patients across the Barwon South-Western region. Barwon Health has committed to developing new models of integrated systems of care which has lead to a greatly improved health care system for individuals, whether in the hospital or through one of the service option facilities. As an integrated organisation, Barwon Health aims to give more opportunities for collaboration among disciplines, research, clinical development, training and education.

Barwon Health incorporates 19 sites including The Geelong Hospital, Grace McKellar Centre and Geelong Community Health Service. In all clinical service areas, Barwon Health is confronting both immediate and longer-term challenges to provide timely care for all residents in Geelong and surrounding areas.

i.Patient Manager supports the full continuum of care
Modern Information systems provide the tools to enhance the delivery of patient care. Centralised information with access to patient records enables Barwon Health’s organisation mission – to improve the integration of care across the Acute, Aged Care, Community and Mental.

Health disciplines
As part of the organisations focus on modernising the way it delivers integrated patient services, Barwon Health has chosen iSOFT i.Patient Manager to help deliver these benefits to its staff and patients.

i.Patient Manager is based on a single integrated database of patient records enabling more effective patient management across the continuum of care.

The Project
In the first phase of implementation some 480,000 patient records were migrated from a number of existing patient systems within Barwon Health. In addition i.Patient Manager was implemented across a number of services including: Outpatients, Diabetes Referral Centre, Maternity Service, Pain Clinic, Allied Health, Radiology bookings, Paediatric Adolescent Support Service, Primary Care, Community Rehabilitation Centres, Sub Acute Clinics and the Home Based .

Rehabilitation program
In October 2002 Barwon Health completed the roll out of i.Patient Manager 1.84, taking advantage of the significant new functionality across its range of acute, community and aged care services.

The implementation included the upgrade of all i.Patient Manager functionality including the first i.Patient Manager 1.84 Multi Campus implementation in Australia. This upgrade has allowed Barwon Health to expand its business usage and take greater advantage of iSOFT’s leading edge development of its patient and community system. i.Patient Manager has been designed to address the specific service requirements of health professionals and recognise the business drivers of the contemporary health organisation such as Barwon Health.

The upgrade which included the ADT, Bed Management, Medical Record Tracking, Inpatient Billing, Theatre Management and Waiting List. Acute, takes Barwon Health a step closer to realising their goal of integration of care and patient information. The enhancements provided in this latest version of i.Patient Manger has given Barwon Health the opportunity to achieve the benefits associated with improved clinical and administration processes within a wide variety of services across the organisation.

Business benefits

transparency of available beds across the organizatinon
waiting list and bookings management is available across the organisation
improved Government statutory reporting requirements
improved systems integration to better reflect a total episode of patient care
promote and allow business process change

Operational efficiency

improved access to information at Barwon Health
overall increase in efficiency at Barwon Health
improved customer service at Barwon Health
support improved clinical process at Barwon Health

Management information

implement a system which will initially provide improved facilities for patient management and analysis
broaden participation from staff in production of management reports
improve Barwon Health’s collection, access and analysis of information

Clinical benefits

move towards the concept of an electronic medical record
ability to view within i.Patient Manager the services that all clinicians/carers are providing to patients

Patient benefits

right patient information in the right place at the right time

Other benefits realised

i.Patient Manager has facilitated the provision of improved integration of care from referral
through to discharge across care providing services
i.Patient Manager has enhanced the efficiency of clinical and administrative users by replacing a
number of paper based and stand-alone information systems
i.Patient Manager has provided a consistent approach to managing appointments and waiting
lists across many clinical programs
i.Patient Manager provides an integrated waiting list capability across the ambulatory and
community based services
i.Patient Manager has improved communication to GP’s and patients through the generation
of referral acknowledgment and waiting list details.

Moving forward
Barwon Health will continue to work with iSOFT on improving the integration of care across all health services at Barwon Health. iSOFT is continually evaluating new technologies to fulfil the requirements at Barwon Health including improved communication and data capture through the use of mobile devices.

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