Charisma Medical Software underlines the resposiveness of the laboratory services provided by Regina Maria

Charisma Medical Software is a versatile software that can be customized for each laboratory in part, can be configured as needed and, very importantly, has a very high speed.

- Andreea Alexandru

Chief Laboratory Physician, Regina Maria, Bucharest

Company
Regina Maria, the largest private healthcare network in Romania, outstands on the Romanian market due to its high quality medical services and impressive number of health facilities through which it addresses more than 165,000 subscribers and the general public. In mid 2012, Regina Maria meant: 18 proprietary clinics, 6 hospitals, 3 maternity hospitals, 3 medical campuses, 5 imaging centers, a stem cell bank and over 130 partner clinics.

The activity of the concern is supported by national clinic laboratories (in Bucharest, Brasov, Constanta and Bacau), which ensure both emergency medical tests and investigations required by hospitals, as well as regular tests coming from other units.

The laboratory network insures a vast range of investigations, varying from the usual set to advanced diagnostics, providing over 1.300 types of medical tests.

Situation
The laboratory in Bucharest was quite young, having only two years of activity. It was set up as a result of the concern’s need for faster and accurate laboratory services. The laboratory provides emergency medical tests requeste by the hospital, but it also takes care of medical tests requested by other clinics or external partners (clinics lacking laboratories, specialists in other locations, family doctors or individual clinics).

“We receive a daily average of 1,000 medical requests. For their review, we process at least 6000 analyses. Out of these, 20% are urgent and need to be delivered within 2 hours.” says Dr. Andreea Alexandru, Chief Laboratory Physician, Regina Maria, Bucharest.

To support this volume, which continued to grow as the network expanded, it was decided that the lab work be managed through a specialized computer system able to automate as many activities as possible by integration with the analyzers, and remove any possibility of human error.

In addition, the laboratory information system should also support other activities of the network through integration with the financial-accounting software, with the appointments and consultations application,and the Web site through which patients can access their results.

Solution

The collaboration with TotalSoft dates before the merger and rebranding of CMU and Euroclinic. The chain already used Charisma ERP and Charisma Medical Software. With the establishment of the laboratories division, Charisma Medical Software was a natural choice to manage a task of such importance.

The implementation of the system in the Bucharest laboratory meant, firstly, the integration of the laboratory equipment (analyzers) and the automation of the retreival of medical tests requests and delivery of results. In the first phase, Charisma was integrated with the chemistry and hematology analyzers, for they processed the largest volume of analyses, followed by those of immunology and those with lower volume of activity.

For bacteriology, a department which is less involved in the automation process, the manual operation was preferred. The aim was thus, eliminating human intervention and potential errors and obtaining faster results.

Then, Charisma was integrated with Regina Maria’s website to provide patients the possibility to access their result online. These are available in a special and secured section: the access is granted based on the sample code and web access code. “The results are sent to the web page every two hours,allowing the laboratory doctor to spot potential discrepancies” says Dr. Andreea Alexandru.

Charisma also provides the possibility to make appointments for medical test. This feature is used only for the investigations paid by the National Health Insurance House. The moment they expire, the laboratory informs the patients that they ran out of funds and schedules them for the next month.

Charisma’s synchronization with SIUI (Unique Integrated Information System) is done automatically, and it sustains the montlhy reporting activity to the National Health Insurance House. “We only have to check the information and order the analysis reports”.

By integrating Charisma Medical Software with the financial-accounting system used by Regina Maria (Charisma ERP), the company targeted the automatic retrieval of financial information, invoicing according to services provided, requisite generation based on consumptions, income and expense reports generation, consumables tracking; in short, monitoring the laboratory’s efficiency.

The system is accessed by 35 laboratory specialists, with personal passwords and access rights according to their specialty.

Results

Urgent analyses are delivered in a much shorter time than the one agreed by industry standards (only 2 hours). “When the analysis is complete, the analyzer automatically sends the results in Charisma where they are validated by the technician and the doctor, and within in seconds, they become available for the hospital and clinics doctors.”
Doctors’ activity is supported by the possibility to check partial results. “There are cases where some analyzes require less time to be processed by the analyzer and at the same time, they are very urgent. In this situation, Charisma provides the possibility to view only the partial results, as they are completed.”
By integrating analyzers with Charisma, human errors were eliminated “The analyzer reads the barcode on every tube, analyzes samples and provides the results in Charisma, always with a reference barcode. Thus, we have largely eliminated human intervention and, therefore, any contamination of samples or alteration of test results.”
By integrating the activity with Charisma ERP the financial-accounting processes have been improved “We streamlined the activity of the laboratory personnel, by eliminating redundant tasks and reducing expenses at medical unit level.”
The delivery time of the medical tests results decreased significantly “Of the 6,000 minimum daily analysis performed by Charisma, 20% must be delivered urgently, within 2 hours, and nearly 80% until the next day. There is a very, very small percentage that is delivered in a longer period of time; this happens only to make efficient use of reagents and maintain the cost analysis to an accessible value.”
Information accuracy, by double checking of the medical tests results (by the system and the laboratory specialist) “A doctor validates a list of 150 entries/records in 30-45 min, about 4-5 records/sheets per minute. This is largely due to Charisma that gives us the information automatically.”

Case study revised in 2012.