Press Release: Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian Signs Agreement for Unibased ForSite2020® RMS Enterprise Scheduling

Unibased Systems Architecture, Inc. (Unibased) announced today that Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian (Hoag) has signed an agreement for the license and implementation of the Unibased ForSite2020® Resource Management System (RMS) software application suite, including the POCET and CASH physician and consumer portals. Hoag intends to use ForSite2020® to provide the physician and patient community with an enhanced customer experience that will include a streamlined registration process, 24/7 availability to self-service functions, and a one-call “one-stop-shop” scheduling process for all services and procedures across the Hoag enterprise and five of its institutes, which include Hoag Cancer Institute, Hoag Heart and Vascular Institute, Hoag Neurosciences Institute, Hoag Women’s Health Institute, and orthopedic services through Hoag’s affiliate Hoag Orthopedic Institute.

ForSite2020® will play a role in both the Hoag implementation of an electronic health record (EHR) and a health information exchange (HIE), linking physician practices, clinics, reference labs, imaging centers, pharmacies, diagnostic centers and patients. The HIE and other methods of communication with the community will improve quality of care, patient safety and healthcare efficiency. The Unibased ForSite2020® RMS enterprise scheduling system will facilitate these objectives as well as improve the coordination of patient care. The HIE will provide a platform for participating physicians to confirm patient schedules based upon requested services in an expeditious fashion.

Tim Moore, Hoag’s Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, stated, “Hoag exists solely to provide the best healthcare experience possible to the communities we serve. Hoag has a long-term commitment in investing in our communities through enabling technologies. After an extensive evaluation process, we have selected Unibased as our comprehensive enterprise scheduling solution related to their proven track record, ease to work with, and commitment to our shared objectives.”

Phil Amelung, Principal Consultant for Unibased, agreed, “Unibased is looking forward to supplying Hoag with tools they will use to transform the way services are accessed and delivered at Hoag. With a project like this, everybody wins. Patients and physicians are provided more convenient access and a consistent “front door” to services at Hoag, administrative processes are streamlined so that service locations can focus on providing quality services for their patients, and many business service benefits are realized from enhanced and expedited revenue cycle functions.”

About Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian:  Hoag is a not-for-profit regional healthcare delivery network in Orange County, CA that treats nearly 30,000 inpatients and 350,000 outpatients annually. Hoag consists of two acute-care hospitals, seven health centers and three urgent care centers (with three more scheduled to open in Fall 2011). Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, which has served Orange County since 1952, and Hoag Hospital Irvine, which opened in 2010, are designated Magnet hospitals by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Hoag offers a comprehensive blend of health care services that include six institutes providing specialized services in the following areas: cancer, heart and vascular, neurosciences, women’s health , primary care and orthopedics through Hoag’s affiliate Hoag Orthopedic Institute. Hoag has been named one of the Best Regional Hospitals in the U.S. News & World Report Metro Edition. National Research Corporation has endorsed Hoag as Orange County’s most preferred hospital for the past 15 consecutive years and for an unprecedented 15 years, residents of Orange County have chosen Hoag as the county’s best hospital in a local newspaper survey. Visit http://www.hoag.org/.

View/Download PDF of Full Press Release HERE

R & D: Some Highlights of Release 6.25

Interactive Comments
Frustrated with calls back and forth to your physician offices? The newest enhancement to Unibased’s Physician Access portal has interactive comments. Whether it is the physician office or the access department, simply enter your comments in the interactive comments box and an indicator will let the other party know there is a message that requires their attention. Whether it is clarifying instructions, suggesting an alternate procedure or simply sharing specific information about the patient’s desires, instantaneous communication is at your fingertips.

New Managed Care Rule for Insurance Non-Coverage by Provider
An additional managed care rule is now available to alert schedulers if a provider they are assigning to an appointment does not accept a patient’s insurance. If a provider does not accept an insurance company's coverage, the system will provide a yellow warning at the time of scheduling.

Reminder Letter Enhancements
The reminder letter feature has been enhanced to allow for automatic generation for both the hard-copy reminder notice as well as an auto send of an email reminder notice.

Contact your Unibased account representative for more information on all the enhancements included in Release 6.25.

Comprehensive EMPI and Related Services

Some may not realize that within RMS you have an enterprise master person index (EMPI) specifically designed for a large scale multi-facility environment. It includes services associated with the conversion of individual facility MPIs and ongoing interactive MPI maintenance with those facilities. The Unibased EMPI notifies you of duplicates such as social security numbers, and searches for errors such as inconsistent birthdates, name spellings, and so on.

Along with Physician Access, it will support and maintain an interactive physician’s office mini-MPI. Unibased provides conversion edits which address obvious garbage data in the MPIs such as 999-99-9999 for a social security number and flag the record for investigation.

A key feature of the EMPI is the option for a corporate-wide medical record number, which may be linked to multiple facility-based medical record numbers throughout the enterprise, or you can merge multiple medical record numbers into one. The EMPI contains patient data, linked to guarantor and subscriber, linked to physicians, insurance plans, orders, schedules and registrations. The system’s rapid search methodology provides sub-second retrieval of patient information, including multi-page lists, patient photographs, insurance card and driver’s license images, document images and, most importantly, positive patient identification because it allows you to rapidly discard garbage data and fully support patient safety.

Unibased has converted MPI data from all Siemens products, Cerner, McKesson, Meditech, Eclipsys, Quadramed, Keane, etc., cleaning out duplicates and erroneous data, and establishing an error-free, multi-facility corporate EMPI for the future. RMS includes this basic product; namely, no significant license cost would be involved to upgrade. Unibased would provide access to a few additional EMPI windows.

Before you spend several hundred thousand dollars on another third-party product, you may wish to check it out. Contact Larry Grossman at ext. 168 or
Jon Castner at ext. 122.

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PHI and Security

HIPAA has updated provisions, and HITECH 13401 is here (almost). All Unibased employees will be attending multiple classes presented by Brown Smith Wallace (BSW), experts in this field. Several elements in this area have or will find their way into Unibased security and training curriculum software. A clear audit trail of training for your personnel is recommended. Unibased has software (ET2S) that may be helpful in scheduling and documenting your training. If you are interested, call Larry Weigel at ext. 153.

Plugging basic internet security gaps continues to be a problem for everyone. David White (ext. 132) has been working with internet security engineers from BSW reviewing the implications of multi-page, multi-challenge access methods for Physician Access and CASH, similar to the process used by major banks. The design challenge is to ensure secure access without making the process so cumbersome that it won’t be used by the intended audience.