The potential and very high level of integration of SAP have allowed the achievement of perfect patient management, now at the center of the entire system
Abstract, an established partner in the world of Information Technology serving the innovation of market leading companies, is a partner of the University Hospital of Ferrara in its digital transformation journey in favor of a service capable of guaranteeing continuity of care to the patient, reducing the incidence of risk and improving the management of resources and, therefore, waiting times.
The University Hospital of Ferrara "Arcispedale Sant'Anna" is the largest and most important hospital in Ferrara and the province, as well as one of the main and largest polyclinics in Emilia-Romagna. Despite being a separate and autonomous corporate body, both from an administrative and financial point of view, the hospital operates in strong synergy with the University of Ferrara (Faculty of Medicine and Surgery) and collaborates equally in various areas with the AUSL of Ferrara.
The drive towards greater digitalisation of the company was born as an innovative response to the new and pressing needs of the sector regarding the planning and control of in-person activities and the related attention to healthcare spending. The presence of numerous disjointed and non-homogeneous systems, which managed only a small part of the process, made the analysis of costs and revenues very complicated and expensive, in terms of time and resources, and required data processing in subsequent steps. Therefore, thanks to his professionalism, consolidated skills in strategic consultancy and knowledge of clinical-hospital dynamics, the Business Integrator Abstract was selected to accompany the hospital company in the reorganization of internal processes and in the profound organizational change that resulted from it.
Therefore, between 2004 and 2005, a first installation of the SAP ERP was started and the development of the functions for the administrative area was followed (2006-2011) by the implementation in the healthcare area. The transfer to a new hospital location in 2012 made it necessary to review the functionality of the information system, in particular, with a view to activating a series of centralizations of functions. This involved the study and design of a new computerized tool: a real-time availability "planner" of beds and armchairs, to be made available to all operational units. Subsequently, the focus was directed to the area of clinical documentation (specialist documents and medical records) to then lead to prescription and administration.
By relying on SAP, the hospital had the opportunity to obtain the maximum level of integration between all areas of activity and to leverage the potential for interoperability of the software with other systems. In addition to improving the patient experience, the introduction of the new system, based on the SAP platform, and the optimization of the main business processes have led to concrete and quantifiable results:
- improvement in the planning of hospitalizations and diagnostic and therapeutic activities;
- greater efficiency in the use of personnel;
- rationalization of inventories;
- reduction in consumption.
“What the University Hospital is creating is an innovative healthcare organizational model for our country which is on par with cutting-edge international realities and which will contribute to bringing out the clinical excellence already present in the company even more,” he said Luca Chiarini, Head of the “Innovation and Development” Departmental Area of the University Hospital of Ferrara. “We needed to modernize the HIS (Hospital Information System) and cover all those areas not yet computerized, but also to rationalize and simplify the native integration between the systems supporting care processes and operational management. All this to provide operators with a single interface to access all health, administrative and supply process management information”.
“The introduction of SAP and the construction of a highly integrated architecture have made it possible to obtain an agile and scalable corporate repository that places the patient at the center of the process. The use of specialized workstations, the sharing of a single front end, the experience of mobile technologies have made it possible to fully share all clinical, healthcare and administrative information, in real time - from acceptance, to diagnoses, to therapies, to the services provided, up to the patient's discharge and the accounting of the related costs,” he added Alessandra Coletti, Project Manager SAP and Healthcare di Abstract. “The construction of such a layered and efficient architecture led to immediate results, derived primarily from having structured and harmonized data available in the construction of a data warehouse thanks to which we were able to develop effective control tools, real-time monitoring, planning and risk and cost reduction. Furthermore, the optimization of logistics processes and full control of the entire procurement cycle have led to an improvement in the economic and financial results with clear benefits also on the company's capital structure".
Among future developments, some projects are close to the 'Go Live' phase which involve both nursing and administrative staff to extend the medical record to all departments, activate the specific outpatient process for gastroenterology (with screening paths and image viewing) and to implement the new 'See&Treat' flow for the general emergency room. Furthermore, although still in their infancy, there are other important projects in the pipeline that would lead the hospital to have greater visibility on the national territory.
