Major Hospital in Shelbyville Indiana implemented PatientWorks kiosks and electronic signature capture as part of large enterprise system upgrade. “We are excited to provide our patients with the convenience and accessibility of Self-Service Kiosks for both our Ambulatory and Acute Care patients. For our Walk-in population we use PatientWorks’ Xpress solution to streamline the registration process of staff members by capturing electronic signatures on consents and automatically cold feeding the signed image to Scanning and Archive. We also use PatientWorks’ Appointment Reminder text feature to reduce our no-show rates” said MHP CIO Carol Huesman. “With PatientWorks integrated to MEDITECH, we were able to replace other vendors’ solutions during this migration project and reduce the number of systems and integrations we support.”
A Success Story – How PatientWorks Helped Major Hospital Implement Patient Self-Check-In Kiosks During an Enterprise System Consolidation
The Problem
Major Health Partners is a leading healthcare provider for patients from not only Shelby County, Indiana, but also from the southeastern part of the state. Since 1924, Major Hospital/Major Health Partners has grown to offer a wide spectrum of services, leading the region in many areas of healthcare delivery. By providing quality care through their unique combination of state-of-the-art technology, modern facilities, and personal service, Major Health Partners gives its patients all of the advantages found at large urban hospitals, combined with genuine personal service, and that’s the Major Difference.
In January 2017, MHP had moved from a 150,000-square-foot facility to a new location that spans 350,000 square feet. The 48-bed hospital now has more than 1,000 employees and houses multiple provider practices, an outpatient lab, and all acute, ambulatory, observation, and specialty services under one roof. Plus, the emergency department doubled in size and increased the number of beds from 13 to 24.
As it grew, MHP implemented various solutions including disparate applications and systems for its provider practices, hospital, and other locations. Management decided that to better serve its patients and providers, these disparate systems should be consolidated into a single enterprise solution. Known for technology innovation in its operations, Major Health Partners had been a partner with MEDITECH since 1995. Therefore, management selected MEDITECH as the new enterprise wide solution. During a planned upgrade to MEDITECH’s 6.1.6 Web Acute platform including the Web Ambulatory Platform (“Expanse”), Major Health Partners saw the opportunity to share data across physician practices, ED, and inpatient environments through conversion of physician practices from NextGen to MEDITECH.
MHP had used two different information systems in the past, one for hospital-centered care and one for outpatient care. Patient data and medical records such as labs, X-rays and inpatient stays were housed in one system while outpatient provider visits and prescription information were stored in another. These disparate information systems were not seamless for patients and providers, so a significant investment was made to improve MHP’s information systems. Expanse combines all patient medical and financial information at MHP into a state-of-the-art, HIPAA-compliant system.
In addition, the project gave Major Health Partners the opportunity to review all systems that were in use and integrated to disparate systems and to reduce the number of systems and vendors. During that review, Major Health Partners reviewed the patient self-service solutions from PatientWorks including patient self-service kiosks. Major Health Partners had experience with self-service kiosks with NextGen and with CrossChx in their operations.
After completing a six-month evaluation of Patient Self-Service vendors that can interface with MEDITECH Expanse, Major Health Partners announced in July 2018 that they had selected PatientWorks, a leader in Self-Service Kiosks and eForms Automation for the project. PatientWorks had demonstrated that their self-service solutions were integrated with MEDITECH and with the version of MEDITECH that Major Health Partners was moving to. The solution was to go live July 1, 2019 at the same time the entire MHP health system would launch the new Expanse integrated electronic health record system. The MEDITECH Expanse system had a hard “go live” date of July 1, 2019 in the hospital and practices since all the solutions that integrated to those enterprise applications that were being discontinued would no longer be functional. Therefore, the new PatientWorks solutions had to be operational by the conversion go live date. This represented a significant effort and critical milestone for the Major Health Partners Team and for PatientWorks.
The PatientWorks Solution
The PatientWorks software selected for the project was able to replace the prior patient kiosks and to add new functionality to the patient check-in processes both at the kiosks and with staff. The solution that was deployed included the following:
Kiosk Hardware
Major Health Partners deployed HP ElitePOS all in one touch screen computers on Meridian G3 kiosks at the registration area. The new kiosk hardware is shown below:
Major Health Partners was also able to use existing kiosk hardware and configurations in various areas.
Software Functionality
Patient self-service kiosks are an important component of the service level that Major Health Partners provides its patients and essential to maintain the desired level of patient service. The solution implemented with the project included the following PatientWorks’ functionality:
Phase 1
• Text Appointment Reminders to remind patients of the upcoming appointment in order to keep “No Shows” low
• Ability for a patient to check-in for their scheduled appointment at the kiosk when they arrive including:
✓ Verifying the appointment
✓ Verifying insurance data
✓ Verifying and updating patient demographic information
✓ Signing electronic consent forms related to the appointment
• Placing patients in a Queue visible to staff to know what patients have arrived, what check-in steps they have completed, and if the patient made any changes to their data
• Tracking wait times and other metrics of the patient visit to assure patients do not wait too long and staff is aware of the status of each patient
• Staff uses the Patient Xpress module which allows staff to have walk-in patients that present to staff without going to a kiosk to sign consent forms electronically. The resulting signed consent form images are automatically sent to Expanse imaging.
• The kiosk solution provides “location specific functionality” for each kiosk based on the needed workflows unique to each location to best serve each of the seven MHP distinct kiosk locations within the organization
✓ MHP Medical Center Entrance 2
✓ MHP Medical Center Entrance 3
✓ Family and Internal Medicine
✓ Imaging Services
✓ OB/GYN
✓ Pediatrics
✓ Renovo Orthopeadic Center
Phase 2
• Patient ability to make co-payment for an appointment at the kiosk
• Digital signage in the waiting room showing information to patients which will alert and direct patients in the waiting room to the appropriate staff member
• Possible enhanced integration with MEDITECH to allow staff members to automatically trigger a specific patient’s consent form(s) to be displayed for electronic signature capture, while the staff member is working in MEDITECH, to reduce the process workflow steps
Results
Major Health Partners was able to meet the targeted MEDITECH Expanse go live date with PatientWorks patient self-service solutions on the July 1, 2019 go live date through the team efforts of the Major Health Partners project team working closely with the PatientWorks team.
“We are excited to provide our patients with the convenience and accessibility of Self-Service Kiosks for both our Ambulatory and Acute Care patients. For our Walk-in population we use PatientWorks’ Xpress solution to streamline the registration process of staff members by capturing electronic signatures on consents and automatically cold feeding the signed image to Scanning and Archive. We also use PatientWorks’ Appointment Reminder text feature to reduce our no-show rates” said MHP CIO Carol Huesman. “With PatientWorks integrated to MEDITECH, we were able to replace other vendors’ solutions during this migration project and reduce the number of systems and integrations we support.”
Larry Haworth, CEO of PatientWorks, stated “Major Health Partners took on a large task with many moving parts and a tight schedule. The team at MHP was well organized and the project was well managed. There were many challenges in converting patient data from NextGen and the earlier version of MEDITECH to MEDITECH 6.1.6 and changing the various systems used by patients and staff. Through strong communications and effective leadership, Major Health Partners was able to achieve their targeted go-live date for the project and was highly successful. With their focus of continual improvement of their systems serving their patients, we look forward to a great partnership.”
Some of the results of the new PatientWorks solution include:
✓ 12,950 appointment reminder texts sent to patients during the month of August 2019
✓ Total electronic forms signed at the kiosk or by signature capture with staff during the months of July and August 2019 were 36,800 (26,500 through Xpress with staff and 9,300 at the kiosks).
✓ Approximately 900 electronic signed forms are sent to imaging daily.
✓ During the July through August time period 21,500 patients were added to the Patient Queue with 13,300 being walk-ins and 8,200 being scheduled patients.
✓ Approximately 210 patient check-ins at the kiosk each day.
As Phase 2 is implemented and more patients add their mobile numbers to their patient records, more patients will receive texted appointment reminders and have the ability to pay their co-payments at the kiosk.