Hirslanden

Background

The Hirslanden Group comprises a total of 17 clinics in 11 cantons. Over 2,000 inpatient doctors use the infrastructure of the Hirslanden clinics for their medical services. An intensive document exchange is taking place between the inpatient doctors, their referring physicians and the clinics. Previously, this exchange was not at all seamless as it used various, often paper-based channels. Accordingly, there was much room for improvement.

In 2014, the Hirslanden Group thus decided to commission a networking solution to connect clinics, inpatient doctors and referring physicians.

Goals

In close collaboration with the Hirslanden Group, Netcetera, the i-engineers and Visionary created a solution based on the following goals:

1. Establishing an electronic solution for recording, transmitting and integrating surgery, birth and radiology registrations
2. Digital integration into internal clinic processes and systems
3. Continuous electronic handling of processes from physicians' primary systems into clinic systems and back again, with significant increases in quality and fewer inquiries
4. Convenient operation of docbox forms with and without interfacing with the software systems in medical offices
5. Simple-as-possible on-boarding of inpatient doctors and their software systems
6. Expandability and easy integration of additional processes

The solution

docbox by Visionary connects inpatient doctors and their referring physicians with the clinics. Health engine is responsible for the clinics' internal workflows. Both products have a variety of interfaces for seamless integration into both primary and clinic systems. Digital data transfer reduces the amount of transcription work and automates routine tasks, thus increasing process quality and efficiency. The solution supports physicians, assistance personnel and patient administration employees with high-grade, user-friendly functions (such as integrated ICD-10 diagnostic and treatment catalogs, exam routines, templates, etc.).

The following processes are already available in this system:

• Inpatient e-registration
• Document distribution (bidirectional)
• Radiological e-registration

Other functions are being implemented continuously. Currently in the works:

• Pre-stationary clarification involving the patient's general practitioner
• Outpatient before inpatient (consideration of cantonal guidelines)

All implemented functions optimally cover the additional requirements of an inpatient doctor system.

A consortium consisting of three partner firms successfully executed the order. It integrated both the health engine and docbox products.

Netcetera:

• General contractor / Consulting

the i-engineers:

• Consulting and implementation of workflows as well as networking of the clinical applications (e.g. SAP, HIS MCC, archive systems D3 and Synedra, MPI) with the product health engine.

Visionary:

• Consulting and provision of software "as a service" with interfaces with health engine and inpatient doctors' and referring physicians' practice software systems using the docbox product.

First, the solution was implemented in the Hirslanden Aarau clinic and several other Hirslanden clinics. The solution is so successful that in summer 2017, Hirslanden Group management decided to position it as strategically crucial and roll it out Group-wide.

Conclusion

With this solution and the end-to-end processes it can help to realize, the Hirslanden Group is a leader in electronic networking in Switzerland. The solution is proven to achieve increases in efficiency when processing inpatient and outpatient registrations.

In addition to the digital solution, other important success factors are: the standardized process of connecting the inpatient doctors' primary systems and, above all, the outstanding and close collaboration between the clinics, Hirslanden's ICT & Processes division, and the three suppliers Netcetera, the i-engineers and Visionary.