Recently, the Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital (CWZ) in the city of Nijmegen hosted a webinar to update interested hospitals on the implementation and support of HiX for dialysis. Nephrologist Bart Veldman and senior dialysis nurse Laura Langens, the driving force behind the implementation, shared their most important tips with the participants.
1. Don't underestimate the importance of pharmacies
Bart Veldman: 'Pharmacies play a prominent part in the implementation, mainly in providing and configuring predefined medication orders (PMOs) for the treatments. My tip: involve the pharmacies in the implementation, because they'll also play a big part in drug safety once the system has gone live. That part will not so much involve dialysis medication administered during the dialysis treatments, as it will the medication that patients use at home. Patients often stop taking this medication after they've been admitted to another department for other problems. In those cases, the pharmacy plays a vital part in starting and monitoring this medication after the patient's discharge from hospital, in order to prevent conflicts with the dialysis medication.'
2. Think about the hardware that you're going to use
'Implementations are not only about software, but also about hardware', says Bart Veldman. 'You have to think about how much available space you have to use for COWs, monitor suspension systems, and fixed workstations. To make a long story short: what are the logistical challenges in the department?'
3. Stick with the standard open content
'With standard open content, your department directly benefits from nation-wide improvements', Veldman explains. 'Dialysis departments from multiple hospitals meet regularly to discuss new development wishes. ChipSoft joins the discussions and fleshes out these innovations, together with the hospitals, and implements them in HiX. We can achieve more this way, by working together as hospitals and finding out what we collectively wish for in the configuration. It also saves everyone a lot more time than when hospitals try to invent the wheel all by themselves.'
Support for work processes
After Bart Veldman's plenary presentation, the attendants formed groups. Under the direction of their colleagues from the CWZ, nephrologists, nurses, and application managers discussed the IT support for their work processes, with role-specific views and specific content for every discipline.
All information in a single place
Senior dialysis nurse Laura Langens chaired the session with nurses and department heads. She discussed the implementation and her first year working with HiX. 'At the beginning of the process, you don't actually know what it's going to be like in practice', she says. 'But once you start working with HiX, you quickly notice the advantages. The most important improvement is that all medical and nursing information about the patient is now in a single place. It's very useful that we can quickly see a patient's medical history, not only for us, but also for other departments. If necessary, they can see what care we provided at the dialysis department.' In HiX, care professionals only have to enter a finding once, after which these findings are also available to other practitioners. This way, everyone involved in a treatment has complete access to the patient's medical history when they need it.
Automatic scheduling
'HiX takes a great deal of work off our hands', Langens continues. 'A lot of our activities are scheduled automatically, such as laboratory tests and reminders for specific orders. This is much more effective than before. And we can still adjust these schedules to our own wishes and judgement. For the dialysis department, HiX has greatly improved the efficiency in the work processes of various disciplines, making them less prone to error and more secure. What's more: HiX has also improved and optimised the processes of our current methods and the EHR. We're very happy with it.'