CIOIN

Nandkishor Dhomne

CIO, Manipal Health Enterprises

If this system can work at the busiest of hospitals, it will be a success elsewhere as well

Executive summary

Fed up with its error-prone manual processes, Manipal Hospitals turned to a Health Information System, increasing its revenue by about 20 percent.

The Organization: Manipal Hospital has quite a few superlatives to its credit. Being rated as the best multi-specialty hospital in Bangalore by THE WEEK magazine-for the seventh time in a row-is one. Finding its name in a list of medical marvels-like conducting 10 different surgeries on one person in seven hours, believed to be the first of its kind in India-is another.

But beneath this heap of laurels lay a less than impressive system that even its illustrious doctors could not fix.

The Business Case: With 15 hospitals and nine primary care clinics under its umbrella, Manipal Hospital depended on manual data-entry for its lab results, test reports and billing. "We had mostly manual processes that delayed patient services by increasing their waiting time. Lack of controls, revenue leakages, a lack of transparency in the processes, and unreliable data also added to our woes," says Nandkishor Dhomne, CIO, Manipal Health Enterprises.

It also wasted doctor's time. Because the process was manual, looking for a patient's records consumed a lot of the doctor's precious time. Also, the hospital's legacy systems ran on  basic applications, which only catered to the OPD, although it is the In-patient service that generates about 70 percent of revenue. 

The Project: Fed up with this manual framework and inaccurate information, the hospital realized that it could no longer take any chances.
Dhomne decided to automate the hospital's tardy processes with a Web-based health information system (HIS). He zeroed in on Intersystem's TrakCare. With its clinical and administrative modules it keeps a track of all the departments of the hospital including registration, patient care coordinators, doctors, laboratory, pharmacy, and billing.

These departments have access to the central repository, that has patient information (case history, appointments etcetera) and hospital information (availability of doctors,  pharmacy stock).

First Steps: "If this system can work at the busiest of hospitals, it will be a success elsewhere as well," Dhomne says. With that logic, he decided to start with Manipal Hospital in Bangalore, which has 800 beds of the total capacity of 3,700 that the group offers and it caters to over 1,200 consultations in a day.  "After a small pilot run at one of the smaller hospitals in the city, we decided to go live with the first phase of the application on a midnight between a Saturday and Sunday as our peak load is on Saturday," he says.

The pilot's success resulted in the roll out of the HIS, putting an end to Dhomne's troubles for good.

The Benefits: Thanks to HIS, Manipal Hospital has seen a sharp increase of 15-20 percent in its revenue. "Nearly half of this comes from our ability to better utilize the doctor's time  and cater to more patients and the remainder comes from plugging various sources of revenue leakages,"
says Dhomne.

By keeping track of its inventory online and ensuring that the Quantity on Hand (quantity of goods immediately available) was above re-order levels, the hospital was able to serve the patients better and improve satisfaction levels.