Major Hospital Uses Technology To Improve Operational Efficiency

Major Hospital, an 89-bed facility owned by the city of Shelbyville, Indiana, averages 3,000 inpatient visits and 70,000 outpatient visits annually. Despite its size, Major is one of the most technologically proficient hospitals in Indiana, using state-of-the-art information technology to improve patient care.

"We realize the importance of information technology," says Jack Horner, chief information officer at Major. "We look at information technology not as a cost, but as an investment in order to distinguish ourselves from our competition."

Major uses MEDITECH's fully integrated MAGIC Health Care Information System (HCIS) as both a patient safety mechanism and as a refined business tool. By using a full suite of MEDITECH applications, Major can intertwine clinical operations with documentation and billing processes.

"The ability to integrate clinical data is the basis for expanding the information services we offer to patients and physicians," explains Horner. "While clinical operations are going on, the documentation and billing of those procedures become secondary in our actual workflow, so that nurses are spending more time with their patients."

Major has also revamped its infrastructure by developing a storage area network design which integrates its Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) and its HCIS into one distinct database for magnet effort disaster recovery. By using a diskless server environment and combining the storage into one disk array, Major has immediate back up for all of its critical data. This is especially important because 85% of procedures are filmless and paperless at Major.

While many hospitals tout wireless functionality, Major finds being wireless secondary to understanding the functionality of the MEDITECH applications and using that knowledge to improve operational efficiency. "Sometimes people focus too much on the technology, i.e. wireless. Users need to remember that the application is the core of the utilization of technology," shares Horner. "And that's what I mean when I say that MEDITECH is the key aspect in winning these awards because it provides the application horsepower for utilization of these other technologies, which truly enhances the information system."