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Morgan Computer Services, Inc.
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Southern Chester Country Medical Center (SCCMC), West Grove, Pennsylvania.
Project: Project Management and Custom Software Development.
Business Issues: SCCMC is comprised of two components; an acute-care community hospital and a continuing care retirement community. In order for a healthcare institution to survive during the recent period of healthcare retraction, careful cost control and strategic planning encompassing these facilities had to be implemented. To succeed while many other hospitals were failing required investments in computer equipment, patient healthcare software programs, and a brisk-paced series of projects that involved a broad organization-wide team of motivated individuals. Besides updating the current systems, numerous new hardware platforms were needed to support the new services found on the strategic plans. Within the acute-care setting, these plans included a new maternal/baby delivery wing and the associated maternal/fetal monitoring system, as well as an expansion of the existing campus to double the number of remote locations. Construction of four new large resident buildings and a shopping center for the retirement community was also included in the plans. All of the expansion and upgrades required creative network communication solutions.
The MORGAN Solution: On many of the largest projects, Morgan developed dozens of project plans that included hundreds of individual tasks. Using a strategic plan approved by the board of directors, the Information Services Team of just six (6) successfully completed over fifty (50) projects in just eleven (11) months. Accomplishing so much within such an aggressive timeframe required leveraging of existing staff from outside departments, and strategic outsourcing, when appropriate. The projects completed with this timeframe included an upgrade to the HBOC Patient Care system. This system incorporated over twelve (12) new servers - some with multiple processors. Centralized software was upgraded and enhanced to support additional patients, faster performance, and to provide more robust reliability, since patient care and safety was and still is of prime importance.
Accounting systems were implemented that tracked retirement community tenant transactions. Since occupation levels in the community had increased by 300%, the accounting systems had to include medical care and proper tenant billing. MORGAN developed contact management software, which was used by the marketing department to track prospective sales of expensive retirement housing units. Executive Information Systems were created to generate reports from a data warehouse of patient medical information. Interfaces to medical labs were established to exchange patient lab orders and results data. A custom Human Resource Benefits application was developed to not only track employee benefit selections, but to work with insurance providers to ensure computer payroll deductions were correct and payments were efficiently processed. Applications were created for the Customer Service department to track patient complaints through to their resolution. Several multi-media computer-based training videos were implemented for the Education department.
Y2K required the replacement of 300 computer workstations and the testing, upgrading or replacement of over 1500 medical devices. Because of the number of devices that needed to be tracked, an inventory program was developed to organize the status of every device located both on campus and offsite in the home services program. A microwave antenna was mounted to the roof of the facility permitting a long-range, line-of-sight communication link with nearby medical buildings. This eliminated the expense of digging underground trenches and running network cables especially when facilities were across common roadways.
A Time Card Swipe system was installed to streamline payroll and time management for the 500 employees. Fiber-optic cables were run underground across the medical facility campus to four newly constructed four-story retirement residences and a new shopping center. Community satisfaction was tracked using a new custom software program, helping to ensuring that any potentially dissatisfied patient issues were resolved quickly, professionally, and in a caring manner. A Help Desk was created and custom software was developed to track and assist with over 1000 customer requests that came in within just 6 months.
The tracking systems developed by MORGAN created metrics that measured calls by type, resource balancing, and completion time. The metrics produced by the tracking system justified an increase in support personnel. Team members received requests remotely, using a dispatch approach along with the software to assign the calls. Once assigned, individuals were given the authority to complete their tasks, update the tracking system, notify the customer, and close the requests from their desks.
Benefits: The solutions saved over $100,000 in telecommunication-related expenses. Project Management techniques oriented around the "Team" concept improved productivity through collaboration. The expertise of a small team of resources was leveraged appropriately, allowing the successful completion over 50 projects in just eleven (11) months.
Technologies: Client Server, Medical Management Operating and Reporting Systems, Wireless LANs, Swipe card, Telecommuting, Telephony-based Billing, Dial-up interfaces, remote support, Internet, Intranet
Tools: Visual Basic, Microsoft Access, MS-SQL Server, HBOC, Microsoft Project, NT4.0
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