Health Information Solutions

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• Health Information Systems

HST provides integrated HIS solutions for large healthcare enterprises such as the Western Cape Provincial Health Department and the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS). These systems incorporate high performance products from leading international software companies – products that are used in over 100 countries around the world – and represent the largest installations of their kind in Africa and in the case of the NHLS, the world.

Operating within primary healthcare and hospital settings across in- and outpatient, emergency and speciality environments, each system begins with an IHE-compliant Electronic Master Patient Index (EMPI) capable of integrating past, present and future interactions. This EMPI uses biometrics and demographic information to allocate a unique identifier to each patient, and has been made available to third party healthcare providers, facillitating the consolidation of the patient journey across different departments and facilities.

With this core component in place, our clients are able to add any number of the following HST modules to their system in order to deliver a customised solution that meets each and every one of their requirements: Patient Administration, Clinicals, Medicines Management, Electronic Prescribing, Patient Billing, Telemedicine and Materials Management.

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• Patient Administration Systems

Patient management is provided within the emergency, in- and outpatient settings and is subject to an ongoing continuous improvement program, which aims to deliver optimal efficiency in daily hospital operations. The system ensures complete control of the full patient journey from registration through to discharge and includes patient coding, pre-admission, waiting list management, ward attendances, access management, coordination of boarders and escorts, Casenote tracking, and file and folder management.

All billable events are captured by the system and added to the relevant episode of care within the integrated billing platform, while the collection of clinical data is facilitated via ICD coding in conjunction with the Electronic Continuity of Care Record (eCCR).

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• Medicines Management

HST has implemented the System C Pharmacy System in over 100 pharmacies across South Africa. This integrated solution, designed in collaboration with pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and system users, covers the full medicine management process – from procurement and stock management to dispensing. All information gathered during the process is automatically added to the relevant patient record using the Electronic Master Patient Index (EMPI) identifier.

The system provides a range of essential features, including an advanced drug formulary which displays details of drug restrictions during the dispensing stage and an automated drug interaction check that prevents incompatible medicines being taken together. Advanced stock management tracks usage trends and manages expiry dates, positively impacting total usage and efficiency of medicines.

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• Patient Billing

The HST Patient Billing and Accounts Receivable (PBAR) system caters for fee-for-service Medical Aid, Private or Uniform Patient Fee Schedule (UPFS)-based billing, automated claims switching and provides comprehensive information to hospital fee departments within the implementation. PBAR ensures that services provided within the hospital are accurately billed, debtor information is managed, and billing information is readily available at any stage of the episode of care. The system integrates with the Hospital Information System (HIS) and Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI), assigns hospital visits into appropriate UPFS classifications and automates the billing of services.

Scalable for multiple hospitals, PBAR facilitates a number of users performing online functions simultaneously. It also uses batch processing to complete the accounting process, including the creation of finalised financial transactions, invoices, statements, reports and billing statistics. PBAR allows central control of the tariffs master file, which enables comprehensive, uniform and manageable application of the Medical Aid, Private and/or UPFS tariffs and rules.

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• Clinicals

The Electronic Master Patient Index (EMPI), a database that assigns a unique identifier to each patient, is able to facilitate the synchronisation of clinical data within patient interactions from several different sources. These sources include the Hospital Information System (HIS), Patient Administration System (PAS), Laboratory Information System (LIS), primary healthcare applications, RIS/PACS, pharmacy, ePrescribing, billing and Electronic Continuation of Care record (eCCR) in order to create a holistic view of individual patient histories.

The collection of this data is facilitated via ICD coding in conjunction with the eCCR, which retrieves the patient and patient episode from the system and permits the practitioner to apply diagnosis (ICD 10) and procedure coding (ICD 9), view previous coding, refer the patient for additional treatment and list medication for dispensing. The clinical summary, which includes completed investigations and their results as well as all prescribed treatments paths, is added to the eCCR via an intuitive summary builder. The end result is a detailed discharge summary that is added to the patient record and uniquely identified via the EMPI.

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• Materials Management

Effective inventory management is key to reducing costs, increasing profitability and, by ensuring that patient demand is met quickly and efficiently, improving patient care. Tailored to the healthcare space and easily customisable for specific roles and processes, our materials management software is easily scalable, responsive, simple to use and understand, and is backed by a team of industry experts who ensure that it is always online and accessible.

This innovative system seamlessly automates the end-to-end process, delivering fully automated audit capability, stock movement management, supplier management and evaluation and cost centre analyses in order to achieve and maintain optimum stock levels at all locations, improve those processes associated with material procurement and replenishment, and aid stocktaking. It also enables electronic integration with the general ledger to ensure transparent financial management and monitoring.