A Multi-site Approach to Patient Care

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IMPAX INSIGHTS
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Patient CarePatient Centric Workflow across Multiple Sites. Consolidation is sweeping across healthcare. Behind this global trend are two factors: the rising cost of healthcare and the need to develop a centralized approach to sharing content across various healthcare facilities to improve the efficiency and quality of patient care. Healthcare facilities across the globe are responding by forming integrated, multi-site health networks. Clinicians no longer work in one location. Citizens are increasingly mobile. Therefore, patient information must be immediately accessible across a broader array of facilities, cities and regions.

Agfa HealthCare Helps You Share Patients, Knowledge and Expertise

Agfa HealthCare is leading multi-site consolidation efforts worldwide. Our expertise in professional services, IT infrastructure and clinical solutions supports the intelligent distribution of patient data throughout the multi-site enterprise. So clinicians and patients can depend on the delivery of relevant clinical data to the point of care, and administrators realize the benefits of a more efficient, effective healthcare system.

What is a multi-site health network?

Comprised of public and private health service delivery facilities, these multi-site health networks share resources, specialists and infrastructure. The result is lower upfront investment in IT and reduced total cost of ownership throughout product lifecycles.

Fundamental to the organizational structure of a multi-site health network is a Longitudinal Patient Record. Indexed by a Master Patient ID from more than one domain issuer, this patient-centric view of information is essential for a successful, multi-site workflow by making data available throughout the healthcare enterprise with a single integration point for the EMR.

Another key component is a multi-site, multi-department repository that does not constrain access by department software (i.e., PACS). Patients can visit participating sites for diagnostic testing, specialty exams or treatment. Thisapproach facilitates the continuum of care and simplifies access to specialists, which combats the rising cost of healthcare by reducing duplicate or unnecessary tests and procedures.

With Agfa HealthCare, Connect and Collaborate Agfa HealthCare helps your healthcare facility connect and collaborate with other local or regional sites to gain economies of scale through the distribution of data, resources and specialists.

With Agfa Healthcare's multi-site network consolidation solution, participating facilities will experience:

Seamless access to a patient's record across to multiple sites
Support for multiple vendors with varying degrees of standards
Enhanced clinical collaboration
Sharing of resources, even among facilities with disparate information systems
Support for city-wide or regional initiatives.

Forward Thinking, Backward Compatible

Successful consolidation of multi-site systems requires standards, scalability and an experienced vendor who understands the challenges of managing security, patient identity and consent and can overcome the challenges of integrating multi-vendor legacy systems.

Agfa HealthCare has complete solutions and proven expertise to successfully consolidate multiple sites to enable the sharing of resources, data and workflow by providing:

Interoperability of multi-vendor PACS and clinical systems
High availability across each site
Scalability
Adherence to standards-based technology
Full support of legacy systems
Complete team training

Requirements for a Multi-site Health Network

Multi-department, Multi-site Repository In a multi-site health network, patient information must be immediately accessible so that clinicians and administrators can share patient data across a number of sites that are likely using different vendor solutions for imaging and informatics.

Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX Data Center is the optimum solution for seamless, interoperable connectivity through a media neutral repository and archive. IMPAX Data Center is a real-time archive that manages structured and unstructured data from disparate clinical sources and unites the data for a single dynamic view of the patient care continuum.

Multisite Health Network

IMPAX Data Center leverages industry standards such as IHE, DICOM and HL7 and separates workflow from storage for true multi-vendor interoperability. IMPAX Data Center provides:

Scalability with no single point of failure
Fault tolerance through the use of a stateless
server architecture that treats each request as an independent transaction unrelated to any prior request
Multi-vendor legacy support
DICOM archive solution for DICOM data objects, including DICOM encapsulated non-imaging objects such as waveforms, structured reports and PDFs

With IMPAX Data Center, participating facilities store and manage all clinically relevant data across the continuum of care, enabling clinical collaboration between sites to improve efficiency and the quality of patient care and reduce initial upfront investment and total cost of ownership.

Multi-site Patient Identification Capabilities

Multi-site enterprises require a master repository of patients and identifiers so that all activities associated with the patient encounter are correctly logged and tracked for continuity of care and excellence in outcomes.

Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX Master Patient Index (MPI) provides a patient-centric view that enables patient referral to other participating sites through the development of a Longitudinal Patient Record. Retrieving a patient's record is not constrained by access to multiple sites regardless of the departmental PACS software.

With a single integration point for the EMR and regional health networks, IMPAX MPI helps multi- site enterprises create patient-focused business strategies that reduce inefficiencies due to fragmented or missing records, duplicate testing or increased patient stays. The result: facilities increase margins and lower the total cost of ownership.

Remote Monitoring and Management Tools Across Multiple Sites

In any mission-critical environment, the high availability of systems and information is crucial for maintaining operations, optimizing system performance, ensuring data integrity and reducing costs.

Agfa HealthCare`s proven Solution Monitoring and Management Services (SMMS) continually manages and monitors hardware, applications, operating systems and databases throughout the enterprise identifying trends that point to potential future conflicts, notifying all stakeholders of the situation and then providing a map to quickly track down and resolve the problem. By utilizing Agfa HealthCare's global services infrastructure and remote access capabilities, SMMS provides:

24x7x364 remote and proactive monitoring
High solution availability and business continuance
Complete dashboard view of system performance and operations for system administrators and clinical managers
Optional reports on IT and workflow utilization as well as Asset Management.

Plus, Agfa HealthCare's SMMS keeps mission critical information readily available throughout the multi-site environment. The combined processes of event monitoring and data mining empowers administrators with the information they need to plan performance-related business initiatives, make strategic decisions on asset management and capacity planning, and maximize the effectiveness of the critical healthcare IT infrastructure.

Standards-based Clinical Solutions Drive Collaboration

As a global provider of imaging and informatics, Agfa HealthCare has the breadth and depth of solutions to drive clinical collaboration. Our expertise and knowledge transcends to understanding the issues surrounding enterprise-wide workflow, sub-specialty reading and sharing workloads among radiologists located at different sites.

Together with Agfa HealthCare, you can achieve widespread access to information across a multi-site environment that will drive patient diagnosis and treatment, continuity of care and excellence in outcomes.