Niagara Health System Gets More from their MEDITECH System with NetDelivery & NetFax
The Niagara Health System (NHS) located in Southern Ontario Canada, is Ontario's largest multiple site medical facility. The organization is comprised of six hospitals and an ambulatory care center that employs more than 4,200 individuals and services 12 municipalities with a total population of 434,000 residents.
In November 2004, the province of Ontario determined that NHS would be the sole provider of acute inpatient care for the majority of Niagara. This required renovations of several existing facilities as well as the transference of management from the former Hotel Dieu Health Sciences hospital to NHS. By 2011, NHS will have a new full service hospital complex in the city of St. Catharines which will include a Mental Health Service Center as well as a new Niagara Regional Cancer Center. NHS expects a continued growth in patient care due to the size of the aging population resulting in an increased demand for medical services.
Filling the Niche
Since 2003, NHS has had NetDelivery, NetFax and MPrint in place. Given the current as well as potential size of NHS, prompt and confidential transference of data is critical. The products from Interbit Data provide NHS with the tools needed to get the most out of NHS's suite of MEDITECH® products. "We are very pleased with Interbit Data. Their products fill a niche we have no other tool for", commented Michael Rennie, Regional Manager of System Utilization at NHS.
NetDelivery enables NHS to simply and securely distribute reports and data generated from the MEDITECH system to those users who need the information in the most beneficial format for them, including fax, print stream, encrypted file or email. NetFax enables NHS to direct faxes to users defined within MEDITECH automatically. MPrint Server helps NHS distribute reports to printers throughout the organization by automatically directing them to a PC via MEDITECH spooling utilities.
Interbit Data has a lot to offer
When NHS began searching for products that complemented their MEDITECH system and would allow them to get the most out of the MEDITECH output, they looked at several different companies' products. "We purchased Interbit Data products because we needed to carve our MEDITECH output in new ways," commented Michael. "Not only did Interbit Data offer us excellent products that met our needs, they did so at an affordable price."
In addition to finding products that solved their requirements, NHS was also looking for a team that understood MEDITECH and could work well with the IT staff at NHS. With Interbit Data, NHS found both. The rare time NHS has been in a crunch, Interbit Data has come through and remedied the problem in an efficient and time sensitive manner.
Quantitative Results
NHS has satisfied their users' requirements and has definitely achieved a return on their investment in Interbit Data products. Michael offered several examples of the many quantitative results NHS has experienced:
- Pay stubs are emailed to thousands of staff as PDF files rather than sent hardcopy, saving the hospital time and money.
- Hundreds of surgical confirmations are automatically faxed each day, offloading the operating room staff to provide better care.
- Three day MARs (Medication Administration Records) are consistently created, providing the pharmacy an accurate log of all medications being distributed.
- PCI (Patient Care Inquiry) statistics are easily downloaded monthly.
High level of satisfaction with Interbit Data
To date, there has been very little that NHS has been unable to do with the flexible and highly capable products in place from Interbit Data. When asked if Michael would recommend Interbit Data to other colleagues he responded with, "We would definitely recommend their products and have done so".