Authors (including presenting author) :
Hung GKZ, Wong MSR
Affiliation :
Department of Paediatrics, Hong Kong Children Hospital
Introduction :
The implementation of a new Clinical Information System (CIS) at HKCH NICU allows us an opportunity to incorporate features that enable us to track specialized resource usage of neonatal intensive care beds. This is additional information that cannot be gathered from the Hospital Authority Clinical Management System (CMS) or CDARS. It allows the user to generate patient lists and data to analyze resource allocation as well as perform audits.
Objectives :
To design a graphical user interface within the CIS at HKCH NICU to allow the healthcare manager to generate patient lists for resource and audit analyses. We describe the desired requirements for our CIS and explore the processes that allow for the data to be collected and displayed.
Methodology :
With the new CIS, we sought to design elements into the system that would allow us to overcome shortcomings from previous electronic systems and provide us with additional data.
Desired requirements included:
1. Tabulation of total inpatient days within a specified time period filterable by:
a. NICU vs. SCBU status for the same Hospital Number (HN) episode
b. Type of transport used as HKCH Critical Transport Team is a new entity in HK established to provide retrieval of ill cases from all over the territory.
c. Referral hospital as HKCH NICU is a quaternary unit with admission only by referral
d. Parent subspecialty for cases as HKCH NICU is a major receiving unit for critically ill neonates within HK
2. Display list of patients who meet specified criteria during hospital episode including:
a. Had one of the “quality assurance” events during in-hospital stay, such as unintended extubation
b. list patients by various criteria including: subspecialty parent team, operating team, or referring hospital
Result & Outcome :
With the new CIS system, we are able to tabulate data and display various patient lists with ease. This allows us to answer questions such as: “Of the 230 NICU-bed days in our unit this month, how many of those days were from Pediatric Surgery subspecialty?” The system allows us to estimate resource usage and bed allocation more efficiently. Our CIS system differs from previous versions in the ease in which data can be retrieved and displayed directly on any computer connected to the CIS system
