Laboratory Information Systems to Make Critical Decisions - Essay Example

Sur Lecturer LIMS Evaluation Healthcare professionals rely on laboratory information systems to make critical decisions on patient care. On the same note, technologists rely on systems of laboratory information to quickly, reliably, and accurately process test results and requests. Laboratory testing is one of the largest contributors to the cost of patient care provided by any health organization. In fact, in the United States, about 3 to 4% of dollars spent on healthcare is spent on laboratory testing. Again, the laboratory tests impact approximately 80% of all decisions made in healthcare. The systems of laboratory information therefore represent the greatest opportunity that can control the ever growing costs of healthcare services delivery (Rugg). This paper seeks to compare and contrast the three laboratory information systems: Sunquest Information Systems, Cerner Millenium PathNet, and Medical Information Technology (Meditech) - Meditech Magic. These laboratory information systems have a common goal of effectively managing the impact of laboratory testing as well as the cost of patient care. In addition, the paper will evaluate the blood bank system. Blood bank system The blood bank system has been automated to replace the manual screening tests previously done on blood products. This system is widely used by centers for blood donation and sites for blood transfusion. The blood bank system has a wide range of features; the automated system can run mandated tests for hepatitis B and C, HIV, syphilis, and the human T cell lymphotropic virus. In addition, the blood bank automation systems can be used to determine blood type and units of blood cross-match donor to a patient who needs phenotype specific blood. The blood banks used by different centers vary in features ranging from the types of tests it can perform, number of tests it can perform per hour, STAT mode availability, and continuous and/ or discrete sampling (T. Wood). In spite of using varied blood bank systems by different healthcare facilities, all the systems must pass the eligibility standards of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in US and the National Health Service in Britain. Majorly, the blood banks perform functions such as compatibility tests for blood transfusions and donations processing. It enhances quality through battery tests and treatments. There have been problems noted with some blood banks systems used by healthcare facilities. This includes post transfusion complications and the inadequate efficacy of transfusion. However, United States hospitals are spending more to deal with the impacts of complications that are related to blood donation and transfusions. This has generally improved the quality of blood bank systems used by the centers and sites for blood donation and transfusion (“LIS review”). Sunquest Information Systems Sunquest Information Systems delivers market leading outreach solutions and diagnostic information technology that are specifically designed to fulfill the main objectives of healthcare leaders today. Sunquest Information Systems has features that are committed to workflow excellence, patient safety, predictive medicine, and patient & physician affinity. This system includes Diagnostic Intelligence providing clinical metrics and operational metrics that are driven by real time and dashboard. In addition, the Sunquest Physician Portan in the Sunquest Information Systems supports the relationship between community and physicians and supports the growth of laboratory outreach facilities. The system also eliminates error and gives optimal business and clinical processes (Ford, “Positive patient ID party of one or more”). The Sunquest Information Systems provides an interface that comprehensively manages information and workflows while delivering diagnostic result insights supporting patient care quality. This system has a Specimen Management Accessioning Routing and Tracking (SMART) feature which enhances full automation of laboratory workflows. This generates a positive ROI and prevents errors, allowing hospitals to put their focus on caring for their patients, what matters most. Another dominant feature in the Sunquest Information Systems is the Sunquest Collection Manager, a definitive solution that automates the process of collecting specimen and delivers high patient safety levels in the hospital. This feature delivers the fastest and safest processes of specimen collection through positive patient identification and production label at bedside. This enables the healthcare provider to accurately identify the patient, verify the tubes for collection, and print the labels in a closed loop process. In other words, Sunquest Collection Manager eliminates all errors that are associated with manual collection of specimen and processes of labeling via extending the information system in the laboratory to each bed in the facility (“LIS review”). The Sunquest Information Systems offers reliable diagnostic and lab information systems worldwide to the health care providers. The system delivers interoperable solutions optimizing facility resources and improving patient care quality. According to Sunquest Innovations, the Sunquest Information Systems abides by the federal security laws and gives forward looking statements and results, for example, operation and lab results. This makes the Sunquest Information Systems a valid and reliable system for laboratory owners and the general National Health Service (J. Wood). Cerner Millennium Path Net Cerner Millennium Path Net addresses solutions to the complexities intrinsic in the environment of hospital laboratories. This system offers solutions in laboratory segment such as: anatomic pathology, laboratory outreach, clinical pathology, and molecular diagnostics. The Cerner Millennium Path Net has the capability to interface with the instruments of laboratory and link all required and necessary information into the electronic medical record (EMR) of every patient. This enables the laboratory team to work with each patient in order to ensure their diverse laboratory needs are met (“LIS review”). The Cerner Millennium Path Net has various benefits accrued for its use and implementation. These include: improved patient care quality via key patient demographic verification, quality controls, and test results; automated processes of pathology with easy monitoring and tracking of specimen using barcodes, image management, and synoptic reporting; capability of processing large specimen quantities safely while minimizing instances of misplaced or lost specimens; capability of simplifying the complexity of capturing the molecular data with integration of electronic medical records (EMR) and real time access to genetic information; and increasing outreach competitiveness with route and courier management, web-based physician order entry, specimen tracking and results viewing. These features give the Cerner Millennium Path Net an advantage over other laboratory systems (Paxton, “Harnessing the LIS to bird-dog critical test results”). The Cerner Millennium Path Net also provides for online ordering of specimen management, procedures, automated instruments in the sections of the laboratory, and result review and assays verification assigned to particular workbenches. The sections of laboratory that benefit from the Cerner Millennium Path Net include hematology, chemistry, urinalysis, toxicology, blood gases, and immunology / serology. As a laboratory system, Cerner Millennium Path Net offers the following additional advantageous features to its users: streamlines the processes with container routing and tracking and sophisticated specimen from remote collection through transport, testing and storage; numerous different formats of result entry are accommodated; contains bar coded specimen labels and collection lists; has specialized functions that perform differential counts; any dilution factor can be keyed in and results calculated and stored for reference in future; interpretations of calculations are automatically performed based on the test results of the components; the laboratory can expedite automatically the critical test and reporting STAT results; supports automatic verification of results based on criteria defined by users; reports are automatically transmitted to fax machines or printers at any remote location like offices of the practicing physicians; provides point of care result entry; provides for online checking, tracking, and reporting of quality control results; the system manages the material lot numbers quality control; supports quality control rules based on westgard as defined by the user; requires immediate documentation and corrective action are required for values of outlier quality control; the users are immediately notified in case the quality control goes out of range; summary or detail reports of quality control are automatically produced on periodic basis; supports patient based quality control; provides functionality to support validation method; makes available secondary validation and review of results; provides user defined report online management with various display criteria and selections for filters; and creates billing transactions upon results verification which captures the workload credit and produces clinical reports (“LIS review”). The Cerner Millennium Path Net uses the relational Oracle database and enables professionals of pathology to make entries of specific patient information, review them, and eventually disseminate such information to any place within the system virtually. The system allows user to track specimen from the collection time and attach to records of a specific patient in the hospital. PathNet as a unified and comprehensive solution supports departments of core pathology including cellular pathology, general laboratory, blood transfusion laboratories, and microbiology. Evidence of the Cerner Millennium Path Net usage can be traced in the Military Health System integrated by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2005. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs integrated the same. PathNet enables the professionals of medical IT to customize the system for specific need of practice through modifying or adding interfaces and specific report or scripts functionality (Paxton, “LIS, EHR tying the knot”). In addition, PathNet can be used in combination or integrated with other Health Information System software like non-Cerner products and Cerner Classic, to allow sharing of patient pathology information facility wide or between facilities. Summarily, the Cerner Millennium Path Net enables physicians to automate the financial, clinical, and managerial processes of their laboratories (Aller). The system simplifies the management of specimen and verifies the pivotal demographics of patients, operational quality controls, and test results. Cerner Millennium Path Net provides its users with: advanced aliquot and specimen identification features, features of auto-verification for advanced accuracy, customized rules and quality control records online review; and comprehensive support for robotics of laboratories and other pre-analytical processor types. Medical Information Technology (Meditech) - Meditech Magic Health information technology (Meditech) entails a wide range of services and products including hardware, software, and infrastructure that are designed to collect, exchange, and store patient data in the clinical and medical practice. Health Information Technology is rapidly becoming the seal of efficient physician practices all over the world. Meditech Magic operating system is designed to effectively operate in the environment of open systems. Meditech Magic is able to run on numerous platforms of hardware, enabling the clients to mix brands of hardware within their network and incorporate the new hardware as developed. Nevertheless, TCP or IP abilities allow Meditech applications to freely communicate within the multi-vendor networks. Most recently, TCP is increasingly being recognized to be the standard link of different technologies of computer networks. The use of computer networking protocols and its interoperability leads to an open architecture. In addition, the Meditech Magic system is connected to other software of the niche and major vendors in order to trade information (“LIS review”). The Meditech Magic has advantageous features required by the users: multitasking ability, simple administration of network, and a graphical user interface making use of applications easy. Meditech has also increased dramatically the power of computing that is available to clients through offering support to the latest hardware from IBM, Compaq, EMC, and Dell. These latest hardware supports Magic on window features due to their 1GHz for quick processing (Skjei). The Health Information Technology (Meditech) has valid and beneficial features that would interest the users of general laboratories. Some of these features include: high speed Microsoft Operating Systems & Intel Processors; industry standard connectivity & networking protocols, new user interface; seamless user interfaces; efficient management system; innovative database management; secure and reliable data storage and archiving; its hardware components are available from Dell, Compaq, IBM, and EMC; powerful decision support and reporting tools; Windows terminal services; and internet access feature. All the major Meditech components of the operating system, Magic, are ported in order to create a program that is executable and runs on machines that are based on Intel with Windows (Ford, “LPL software companies plugs the gaps, hold their own”). The Meditech Magic interface is familiar with conventions of Windows such as drop down menu, desktop icons, and dialogue boxes. This was developed for specifically clients that are satisfied with the Magic functionality and needs an incorporation of window like environment. The Meditech Magic has potential for future improvements. This is because of the potential to assume advantage of the various application program interfaces and device drivers from their partner vendors. These may allow Meditech to perform serverless backups that are centralized or even to encrypt streams of data. General laboratories may choose Meditech Magic due to its features that offer maximized system reliability and performance as well as an efficient hierarchical management of database system. The improved storage ability of Meditech enables clients to have their disk space expanded and improve their response time through increasing the data amount able to be cached. The storage includes Big Blocks and EMC Symmetrix. The use of Meditech Magic will result in an improved quality of health care, reduced costs of health care, prevention of medical errors, decreased paperwork, increased efficiencies in administration, and expand access to an affordable healthcare (Paxton, “The long, hard road to LIS data conversion”). Works Cited “LIS review” CAP. College of American Pathologists, October and November 2012. Web. 26 March 2013 Aller, Raymond, “On a quest for a new LIS?  Research, research, research” CAP. College of American Pathologists, Nov. 2006. Web. 26 March 2013 Ford, Anne. “LPL software companies plugs the gaps, hold their own” CAP. College of American Pathologists, April 2012. Web. 26 March 2013 < http://www.cap.org/apps/cap.portal?_nfpb=true&cntvwrPtlt_actionOverride=%2Fportl %2FcontentViewer%2Fshow&_windowLabel=cntvwrPtlt&cntvwrPtlt{actionForm.contentReference}=cap_today%2F0412%2F0412d_lpl.html&_state=maximized&_pageLabel=cntvwr Ford, Anne. “Positive patient ID party of one or more” CAP. College of American Pathologists, July 2012. Web. 26 March 2013 < http://www.cap.org/apps/cap.portal?_nfpb=true&cntvwrPtlt_actionOverride=%2Fportl %2FcontentViewer%2Fshow&_windowLabel=cntvwrPtlt&cntvwrPtlt{actionForm.cont ntRefe ence}=cap_today%2F0712%2F0712c_positive_patient.html&_state=maximized&_pag Label= ntvw Paxton, Anne, “Harnessing the LIS to bird-dog critical test results”. CAP. College of American Pathologists, August 2009. Web. 26 March 2013 Paxton, Anne, “The long, hard road to LIS data conversion” CAP. College of American Pathologists, March 2009. Web. 26 March 2013. Paxton, Anne, “LIS, EHR tying the knot” CAP. College of American Pathologists, November 2012. Web. 26 March 2013 Rugg, George. “Selecting an LIS? What to seek and what to skip” CAP. College of American Pathologists, Nov. 2007. Web. 26 March 2013 Skjei, Eric, “Disappearing acts—coping with LIS mergers” CAP. College of American Pathologists, November 2001. Web. 26 March 2013. Wood, Jane Pine. “On EMR donations, steer clear of troubled waters.” CAP. College of American Pathologists, Aug. 2012. Web. 26 March 2013. Wood, Thomas. “Vendors break down business of blood bank systems” CAP. College of American Pathologists, September 2012. Web. 26 March 2013< http://www.cap.org/apps/cap.portal?_nfpb=true&cntvwrPtlt_actionOverride=%2 portlet%2FcontentViewer%2Fshow&_windowLabel=cntvwrPtlt&cntvwrPtlt{act onFor .contentReference}=cap_today%2F0912%2F0912e_vendors.html&_state=maxi ized&_pageLabel=cntvwr Read More