Redmond, WA – September 10, 2013 – Faced with a disparate array of information technology (IT) products throughout its 19 facilities located in the state of Virginia, Sentara Healthcare selected Medstreaming Vascular Software Solutions and began an enterprise-wide installation late last year. Post-installation, Sentara officials have reported significant efficiency gains in patient throughput, report standardization, quality and workflow.
“The Medstreaming solution has been easy to access and has provided highly professional report standardization for all of our hospital, office and ambulatory vascular facilities,” said Marc Glickman, MD, chief of vascular surgery for Sentara. “This has helped us achieve an increase of 1,200 more vascular procedures in the first seven months of this year compared to the previous year without added stress to our staff. It is tremendously helpful to have so much data at our fingertips which greatly supports our goal in achieving the highest level of patient care quality.”
Sentara, which has been consistently cited as one of the top healthcare facilities in the country according to U.S. News and World Report, is estimating vascular procedures will reach approximately 60,000 for 2013. This is up from about 55,000 two years previously. Based on this growth, it is essential for Sentara to expedite and streamline the reporting of these procedures undertaken by 21 vascular physicians within its system.
“Prior to implementing the Medstreaming solution, reports to be read would normally stack up for review at the end of the day,” said Carolyn Moseley, director of Vascular Services, Sentara. “This could result in a one or two day delay in sending reports to referring physicians. Our goal was to reach a four hour turnaround in at least 68 percent of the cases by the end of this year, but we have already surpassed this as this powerful solution has enabled our doctors to immediately read reports anytime or anywhere.”
Medstreaming worked with Sentara to customize reports and data to a desired standard and then maximize this standardization to achieve a substantial return on investment due to multiple efficiencies gained. The acceptance by both physicians and technicians of the Medstreaming technology has been extremely high.
“Technicians have standardization, quality and branding with a professional looking report whereas we used to have multiple styles of reports where no two looked the same,” said Moseley. “Medstreaming has the unique capability to customize the exam worksheet templates for each vascular exam we perform. As part of our support agreement, Medstreaming worked closely with our management and staff to provide system customization through software upgrades and continuous improvements. The system just gets better and better all the time. We now have very happy doctors and technicians.”
Sentara is pioneering with Medstreaming to develop a comprehensive analytics solution with instant access to data mining which, in turn, will support operational centralization.
“Sentara is a valued customer and we look forward to helping their vascular service line improve workflow productivity for years to come,” said Wael Elseaidy, founder and CEO of Medstreaming. “We also look forward to pioneering the Medstreaming analytics module with one of the biggest providers of vascular services in the US. Our goal is to provide value to all users of our software solutions, physicians, sonographers, technicians, department managers and healthcare administration.”
Throughout this endeavor and overall implementation of the system, Sentara officials worked directly with software engineers at Medstreaming resulting in faster turnarounds for requested changes or new map concepts as ideas for even more data evolve to enable better management decisions.
“The service provided by Medstreaming has been absolutely outstanding,” said Glickman. “I would rate this as an A-plus, which is something I never do lightly. We look forward to our ongoing work with Medstreaming and the continued effort to ensure state-of-the-art software solutions in support of excellent patient care.”
About Sentara Healthcare
Sentara Healthcare, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is an acknowledged leader in patient safety, quality and innovation with a corporate mission ‘To Improve Health Every Day.’ An integrated not-for-profit system with 26,000 employees, Sentara serves Virginia and northeastern North Carolina with 11 acute care hospitals including a Level I trauma center, outpatient campuses, rehabilitation, home health and hospice, senior services, medical groups, an ambulance service, the Nightingale Regional Air Ambulance and the Sentara College of Health Sciences. Optima Health is a Sentara-owned health plan. Four foundations support creative solutions to help meet community health needs.
About Medstreaming
Many challenges confront the medical industry due to an extremely fragmented data management structure. To address this fragmentation, Medstreaming created a Specialty-Based Vascular, Cardiovascular, and Women’s Health Workflow Application which functions as a “best of breed” performance layer in the inpatient workflow on top of inpatient electronic medical records (EMR). Using this clinical workflow expertise, Medstreaming has also developed the industry’s first “All in One” integrated platform application that runs as an outpatient EMR, image management & reporting, and practice management workflow solution. All Medstreaming solutions act as an aggregator for structuring clinical data which in turn creates powerful data service offerings for multi-purpose, web based, data mining and data analytics. Medstreaming is headquartered in Redmond, WA. For more information, visit www.medstreaming.com.