Success Stories

Dutch Hospital Improves Care with New Electronic Record Management System

Client:

St Jansdal Hospital, Netherlands

Challenge:

The hospital wanted to reduce time spent on deskwork, such as re-entering patient data into the hospital’s systems, so that nurses could focus more on bedside care.

Solution:

St Jansdal deployed CSC’s Lorenzo solution, an electronic record management system that nurses now use to capture data electronically at the bedside.
Lorenzo automatically triggers actions based on patient data and generates reports for hospital management.

Results:

Nurses spend more time with patients and less on deskwork and other healthcare staff can react more swiftly to patient needs which helps improve outcomes.
The hospital now has a core electronic record system around which it can plan its long-term technology strategy.

“Take care of each other.” The motto of St Jansdal Hospital in the Netherlands is close to the heart of the organisation’s 1,800 employees, 350 volunteers and 120 specialists. This means that every activity of the organisation, including technology, must underpin this approach. As Jan Roelofsen, ICT Project Coordinator, St Jansdal Hospital, says: “There’s no problem using IT to generate information, the real challenge is making it useful to healthcare professionals so that it ultimately benefits the patient.”

An incremental approach

Hardly surprising then that the hospital is taking an incremental approach to the deployment of its new electronic medical records (EMR) system, Lorenzo. Says Roelofsen, “Nurses can now input patient data directly into the Lorenzo system on their ward rounds. We started off with a pilot on the clinical ward in March 2011 with 20 beds and when this proved successful we added another 20 beds in June.” The system will be rolled out to all remaining non-specialist wards and will be completed by the end of 2012. Roelofsen is impressed by the commitment of CSC’s Lorenzo team, especially at critical points during the deployment. “They were very dedicated to making this product work, even to the point where issues were being fixed at two o’clock in the morning.” Before the system was deployed, nurses took paper notes during their rounds, gathering patient information, e.g., blood pressure, nutrition, pain levels, etc. At the end of their shift, they entered this manually into the hospital’s information systems. Now they enter information directly into the system at the bedside. Mark Schuurmans, Nurse and Team Leader, St Jansdal Hospital, says: “Lorenzo gives me more time to do other things like caring for the patients instead of copying information into a computer in the office.”

Lorenzo solution at St Jansdal Hospital

Watch the video: CSC's Lorenzo solution at St Jansdal Hospital

By the numbers

As for the benefits, the numbers speak for themselves. Nurses now collect 90% of the patient information, which is available on a daily basis if required and used to generate monthly reports that help ensure that care levels are maximised throughout the hospital. “The simplicity of the system is the main thing,” says Roelofsen. “When it comes to producing reports you just hit a button and the documents are automatically generated.” But there’s more to this than reporting, especially when it comes to patient care. Take nutrition, for example. If a nurse enters a value for patient nutrition that indicates a health risk, the Lorenzo system automatically sends an email to the dietician who can review the current regime and adjust it appropriately. A swift response inevitably improves the likelihood of a better patient outcome, and when you replicate this across other health measures, it has the potential to help St Jansdal nurses take even better care of patients.

Opportunities for the future

Roelofsen is also looking to the future. He is now confident that Lorenzo will become the foundation for the next generation of hospital systems that integrates and coordinates patient data from multiple sources across primary and secondary care activities. “Lorenzo is delivered by a global firm with a detailed EMR road map, even for smaller countries like the Netherlands. In addition, it is largely based on Microsoft technology that is straightforward to integrate with proprietary hospital networks and applications. The Lorenzo roadmap is so clear that it will shape our wider IT strategy when we come to renew databases, networks and end-user devices. We are that confident about the future.”