Hospitals eye IT to streamline processes, increase revenue

EPP News Bureau - Mumbai/Delhi/Kolkata/Bangalore

The health informatics market (the application of Information Technology to health data) is on the verge of a rapid growth phase. Hospitals across the country are leveraging the power of IT in providing the best of healthcare services. Be it utilising the role of IT in streamlining processes, increasing efficiency in hospital processes, reducing waiting time of patients, faster retrieval of data, providing quality care to the patients, modulation of data as decision making tool, as a cost management tool etc, private and public hospitals are increasingly realising its value.

Express Pharma Pulse presents a country wide picture of the surging trend.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, which has a computer application centre since 1978-79, has been constantly endeavouring to make administration and healthcare services IT enabled. Presently, the entire network is on fibre and UTV cable with almost 100 connections in the institute. The four series of IP addresses have already exhausted and they are in the fifth one.

Says Dr R S Tyagi, deputy director and head of computer facility AIIMS, “Gradually the entire administration process is moving towards high level of Electronic Patient Record (EPR).”

On the same lines, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre (EHIRC), New Delhi, has automated its services from OPD to getting appointments on-line. Says M P Singh, advisor systems, EHIRC, “Currently, there are over 350 PCs, more than 20 servers and a common UPS. Recently, the institute has brought in a new EPR system from Australia ‘Metrak’ that takes care of all the aspects a hospital.”

EHIRC has also tied up with California-based Polycam, a web conferencing and collaboration solutions major, to provide advanced healthcare to remote locations in the country through video-conferencing.

On the same line, Mumbai-based P D Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre went through a complete exercise of business process re-engineering before customising the software, to obtain an optimum benefit. The hospital spends around 2.5 per cent of its revenue on information technology.

Says Anupam Verma, director administrations, Hinduja Hospital, “The most important aspect of the implementation was the training of the frontline people for computerisation. Today, almost 70 per cent of the manpower in the hospital is computer-savvy and application-literate, a key to successful computerisation. Our plans at this date are directed towards the clinical systems, medical records, remote management and enhancement of patient convenience.”

JJ Hospital, one of the largest public hospitals in Mumbai, has also been through a similar exercise. A part of the hospital was computerised.

KJ Somaiya medical college and hospital, a trust run hospital in Mumbai has also opted computerisation. Says Dr VV Dewoolkar, dean, “Computerisation no doubt brings in efficiency in services but is costly. Especially online record keeping.”

The 1422-bed Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General (LTMG )Hospital uses computers for recording data for in-patient department. Says Kishor Desai, assistant municipal commissioner, LTMG Hospital “Computerisation has definitely enhanced efficiency of service and patient care.”

In Kolkata, the department of health and family welfare of government of West Bengal has chalked out plans to build a health management information system. Initially, the administrative set up of the health department would be computerised. The State Government has set the end of the current financial year as the deadline.

“PCs have already been installed at the hospitals. The main server will be installed shortly. The servers in the hospitals will be connected to the main server at the new building (Swasthya Bhawan),” said a senior health department official on condition of anonymity.

The State Government has decided to give 100 computers each to the teaching hospitals and 40 to medium and smaller hospitals. “Each patient will be given a unique identification code. His records can be accessed at every government hospital. The records, both billing and medical will be stored in the computers. The electronic display boards lying defunct at the major government-run hospitals in the city also would be repaired immediately, the official informed.

Speaking on the pitfalls of IT, the official said that one of our biggest hurdles is the financial constraint faced by the State Government. But in spite of its limitations, the State Government is investing on setting up an IT backbone for the health sector with aids from several agencies like WHO and others.

Says Sudipta Goswami, CEO, Genesis Hospital, Kolkata, “In today’s world, you can do very little without technology and specially so in the healthcare industry. We have just set up a new hospital in the city keeping in mind the needs of the people in the mid-income segment. We have invested substantially in setting up the IT infrastructure in our hospital. Until and unless a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure is created it would not be possible for the hospitals to provide quality services to the patients.”

Hindrances

Though experts agree that the benefits of IT outnumber the pitfall, there are still many hurdles to overcome. Opines Vishal Bali, vice president, Operations, Wockhardt Hospitals, Bangalore, “Healthcare organisation lack in implementing IT solutions when they fail to understand what is it that they want from IT. Many a time people either over invest or under invest or even lack intellectual capability to run the entire enterprise. They do not create the back-end competence or infrastructure to run the front-end which is very powerful.”

The hindrances are the economics of installation, and the affordability of continuation. Also, lack of managerial perspective in a lot of private hospitals acts as a block towards computerisation, adds Verma.

Private Vs Public

However, the prime reason for the rate of computerisation in government hospitals being much lower to private hospitals is budgetary constraints and lack of trained personnel to man these kind of systems. Perhaps, even lack of initiative could be another reason for less computerisation in government hospitals.

“Private hospitals work for consolidation of revenue that they are making and also in private sector the approvals are few. On the other hand, even after providing the economic viability of the project government takes time to give approvals. Also, people feel that expenditure on the automation of hospital services is useless,” says Dr Tyagi.

“Outsourcing of IT is not advisable in a hospital set up because requirements of a hospital are unstructured. People come with all kinds of requests and if one has their own IT system then these can be met with instantly. However, developing a total integrating IT system for hospital is a mammoth task; it is time consuming as well as expensive. So, a hospital starting afresh can look at some solutions available and can outsource some part,” says Singh.

“In fact you have to outsource some because it is a costly affair and you cannot have all the IT expertise at one place but some IT presence in house is always helpful,” he added.

Compiled by Falaknaaz Syed in Mumbai, Sapna Dogra in New Delhi, Joy Roy Choudhury in Kolkata and Vijaya K in Bangalore