When scheduling dialysis treatment, having the right information at the right time can be a matter of life and death.
One of the nation’s premier providers of dialysis services operates an enterprise of 2,500 clinics. Having recently automated and upgraded their scheduling system to ScheduleWise®, they found themselves having to manually duplicate their patients’ electronic health records (EHRs) in the ScheduleWise application to have patient information close at hand. This was not only a time-consuming process, it opened the door to data errors, duplicate patient records, and out-of-date information that could impact life-sustaining treatments.
In order to avoid these issues and deliver the world-class care patients were accustomed to, the client decided to integrate their eCube EHR database with ScheduleWise so there would be a single source of truth shared between both systems. This created a development challenge because the two systems handle patient data very differently.
Integrating Disparate Systems—and Approaches
Celerity took an Agile approach to the requirements gathering, design, development, and quality assurance phases of the development. We rely on Agile development because we have found it yields faster results and allows more flexibility in the development process. The client is accustomed to a traditional waterfall approach to development, a good choice for projects where the requirements are clearly defined and unlikely to change. Because development was needed from both of our teams, we worked together closely, using our disparate approaches to complete the project in a coordinated fashion.
Working in tandem, we established an intricate set of business rules and utilized existing APIs to form the bridge between the eCube database and the scheduling application. This enabled real-time data feeds from their EHR system to populate and update patient data accurately, establishing a single source of patient truth between the database and the scheduling software. In addition, we also pulled detailed treatment data into the ScheduleWise system, giving the client greater visibility into their 2500 clinics and the ability to compare actuals to scheduled patient treatments.
Delivering Just What the Doctor Ordered
Integrating ScheduleWise and the eCube EHR database has revolutionized the client’s capabilities:
- With a single entry point of patient data, errors and outdated data are minimized
- Over 750,000 patient records were integrated into the ScheduleWise system
- Data cleansing eliminated 15,000 duplicate and incorrect patient records
- End users can count on streamlined, automated, real-time patient records
- End users are more productive now that they don’t have to manually input data
- Patients enjoy greater assurance and safety now that the clinics have accurate data
- Management has greater visibility into all the clinics for planning and improvement
Before Celerity
Traditional waterfall approach to development
Disparate systems requiring manual input
Duplicate data and incorrect patient records
No visibility into actuals and scheduled treatments
With Celerity
Hybrid approach leveraging Agile and waterfall
Integrated systems with real-time data transfer
Cleaner data across 750k files and 2500 clinics
Greater BI upon which to make decisions
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