Case Study: United Family Healthcare
Over time, UFH has expanded its deployment of TrakCare across its healthcare network and has implemented broader clinical functionality to a growing number of clinicians. As a result, UFH has realized ongoing operational and clinical benefits. TrakCare has been a key element in UFH's success, providing consistency and standardization of processes via a shared data repository, workflow support, and integration capabilities to increase efficiencies across multiple operational sites.
Integrating UpToDate — a leading evidence-based clinical decision support resource — with TrakCare gives UFH's clinicians access to information on more than 9,500 topics in more than 20 specialties with a single click, without having to leave the TrakCare environment that they know and trust.
UpToDate has over 5,700 world-renowned physician authors, editors and peer reviewers who synthesize the most recent medical information into trusted, evidence-based recommendations.
During patient encounters, physicians, nurses and other authorised medical professionals can consult UpToDate to facilitate clinical decisions and determine the optimal course of care. The tool also has information specific to patients on topics of interest concerning their disease or condition, and the information can be provided and reviewed with patients, further supporting UFH's patient-centred approach to care.
"Some of our doctors, especially those who came from the United States, were already using UpToDate as a clinical decision support tool," says Dr. Jenny Shao, Health Information System Director for UFH. "TrakCare's integration with UpToDate now provides our clinicians with a direct gateway to a vast amount of medical information without leaving TrakCare. This convenient access enables our clinicians to make more informed medical decisions faster at the point of care, hence further improve our patients' safety and quality of care. It also saves our clinicians time because there's no need to juggle multiple systems and logins."
Since UFH's deployment of UpToDate via TrakCare in 2013, the Total Topic Hit increased from 350 per week to 2500 per week (peak 3200) in the first 3 months, and more users are taking advantage of this functionality every day. "Many of our local doctors and nurses are starting to use UpToDate," says Dr.Shao. "The deployment was seamless. Within a few days we were up and running and the tool is very intuitive to learn and easy to use."
"At UFH, we use UpToDate at every point of care, including diagnosis, treatment, and research," said Dr. Shao. "We anticipate a further increase in user adoption as we continue to expand our deployment of TrakCare's clinical functionality, which will encourage more clinicians to access UpToDate via TrakCare" she commented.
InterSystems' initiative to incorporate knowledge-based reference tools such as UpToDate makes TrakCare an even more indispensable resource for care providers.
