 Mater Hospital The Business Problem The EIM Solution Feedback About Mater Hospital Trust
The Mater Hospital Trust is an acute hospital providing services to North Belfast and the surrounding areas. The Trust provides a wide range of services including acute In-patient, A&E, Day Procedures Mental Illness and Maternity.
The Mater’s mission is to provide high quality patient care irrespective of creed or class, whilst treating every one as an individual.
Serving the people of Belfast since 1883, the hospital was founded by the Sisters of Mercy. The Hospital is situated in the middle of one of the most deprived areas of Belfast and one which has felt the full brunt of the tensions over the past three decades, Drawing patients and staff from both communities the hospital maintains close links with local people.
The main hospital, which opened in 1900, required a major refurbishment in order to bring it up to modern standards. The cost of the first phase, £15 million, was fully met by the generosity of the YP Trustees, who have long been associated with the Mater.
Patients have access to the latest technology with a combined television and telephone at each bedside. Each patient, with their own number, can be contacted directly by friends and relatives.
With an impressive line up of statistics the Mater can achieve in excess of the following in a single year:
• 44,844 A&E Patients
• 64,300 Outpatient patients
• 13,084 In-patients
• 3,957 Daycases
This is achieved with the excellence in service provided by 1,000 staff and 236 Beds.
The Business Problem Inside Mater Hospital
- A current and urgent requirement for a “chronic heart disease management” system, with budget allocated, was of paramount importance with no solution identified.
- The IT department managed technology failures and incidents with rudimentary business processes and paper based tracking.
- A localised legacy imaging solution had become expensive and difficult to extend leaving important documents ring-fenced in the organisation with very limited access.
- The IT Manager could not achieve his objective of standardising processes across departments – not only IT.
- An objective to broaden the use of two key technology assets ( corporate PAS and Active Directory ) was proving difficult to achieve against budget constraints.
- Although Best Value was a key driver the vision was remaining just that; a vision.
The Easy Information Management Solution Ambulance
- The EIM software was loaded onto an existing Web Server supported by the Hospital’s existing SQL Database.
- Excelpoint technicans were engaged to review the existing paper-based process for Chronic Heart Disease Management. This process was refined and produced as a prototype for review.
- The EIM based Chronic Heart Disease solution was implemented on site with further refinements and linked to the corporate PAS in two crucial areas to assist with process automation and ensure data integrity.
- A “Helpdesk” or more accurately an Incident Management solution was also implemented, fully integrated with the Hospital Active Directory in order to capitalise on best practices already adopted.
- The existing ScanFile solution from Canon was embraced allowing a broader user community access to important documents via their web browser.
- These disparate solutions were implemented in a structured manner in order that the component parts can be re-used throughout – joining up processes both within EIM and with PAS.
- At the time of writing the Mater Hospital is currently embarking on the definition and design of a clinical support system back-bone – again implemented in EIM.
- Whilst the technical benefits recognised are numerous the cost efficiency measurement should not be overlooked. The price point of EIM means the ROI equation is measured in months in a pressure cooker environment like the Mater.
- Initial meeting to solution implementation took a little over two weeks.
Feedback “From first meeting, to on-site involvement and the subsequent communication I have been impressed with Excelpoint and their technology, EIM.
I placed challenge after challenge in front of the team on site and each challenge was met and my expectations exceeded.
I am already discussing this exciting new product with my peers in the NHS. The opportunity to embrace and extend this solution seems endless.” John Whitmore, IT Manager, Mater Hostpital Trust
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