60 year old Anandibai from PatilPada was running a continuous high grade fever since 3 days. She had heard about the big city hospital that came to the village with a big van where the doctors provided free treatment and medicines. On her 1st visit the doctors examined her, did her blood tests and gave her medicines to take for the next week. She was asked to follow up after five days of taking medicines and instructed to get all the documents with her on her next visit.
Five days later, she visited the doctor again but without the papers.It was a rainy week and her house got flooded and the medical papers were destroyed. The doctor was perplexed! He saw over 250 patients a week and was not sure of the diagnosis and treatment given to Anandibai since he did not have any backup documentation. So the entire process of history taking, examination, etc. was repeated!
The doctor was hassled; this was the 9th case of the day where the patient failed to bring along the medical records.
The Rural health programme in-charge realised that this was a repetitive issue and needed to be tackled on a war footing. Another problem he came across was that because of the paper records given to the patients, data analysis was very difficult. Lot of man-hours went into data mining and that too was not 100% accurate. This data would be very important to start any new programmes or create any new specialized facilities.
In this regard the team planned to build a module through which the data can be entered , stored , viewed and monitored over a period of time.The team with the help of Hospital IT Dept , started exploring various possibilities of developing the module which will serve the purpose and user friendly.the IT team started roping in different vendors who fit the criteria and can deliver according o the expectation of the hospital. After lots of scrutiny , the vendor was finalized.Post finalizing the vendor , discussions began for the roadmap of implementing the module. The replica of the current form and various activities of the programme were shared with the development team.After multiple discussions and meetings , a final draft of the module was out which was then shared with rest of the team for further inputs.
Pilot run was initiated with the rural team so as to test the viability and functionality. Certain inputs were received from the team which were shared with development team for upgradation.The team met for discussion of the pros and cons of this module and how to solve the queries.
The planning for Go Live of this project was started after the success of the pilot run. All the team members were called and the date was announced for the final day. Finally the day came when the module was officially launched and open to use for the team. The team started using the same . The feedback was satisfactory.
The system is running successfully and has benefitted all.Thus the aim of being eco friendly with an ability to view and retrieve historic data , capture and monitor critical modalities and treat patients accordingly was achieved.
Lessons Learned
- DMAIC methodologies gave a good insight identify measures for optimization of resources.
- Six sigma methodologies gave a structured approach to the Problem Solving.
- Streamlining the process has improved efficiency and enhanced coordination amongst departments especially IT; intra-departmental interaction and process optimization.
- Control Measures should be sustainable help in process improvisation.