New system goes live at Far East Rand Hospital

The Far East Rand Hospital went live with a new health information system on Wednesday.

“We know that the premier is championing digitalisation, now that we are in the fourth industrial revolution. The idea is to create a paperless administrative environment,” said Dr Sonwabo Lindani, the hospital’s CEO.

The move is part of the drive by the Gauteng Department of Health (GDoH) to roll out a single integrated health information system across all hospitals and CHCs in Gauteng.

This system will replace Medicom and PAAB. The hospital staff have been trained to use the new system.

“The advantages are endless. Once patients are captured on the system, their information is available to other medical professionals at other institutions as well. This is because the system is synchronised for the whole province,” said Lindani.

“We recognise that sometimes a patient will go to one hospital and get treatment. Two days later, they may go to another hospital for treatment of the same ailment.

“By using this system, we will know exactly where the patient has been and what medications they were prescribed, to avoid duplication.”

The HIS seeks to do the following for the GDoH:
• Facilitate the attainment of integrated healthcare requirements.

• Provide GDoH with an enterprise health information system platform that integrates our core business requirements.

• Ensure the adoption of common standards, processes, and flexibility across the GDoH landscape.

These are some of the benefits that the HIS offers to patients:
• An integrated and improved patient experience of care due to the single view of the patient.

• Electronic files will reduce patient waiting times and prevent the loss or theft of files.

• The new SMS notification functionality will ensure that patients never forget their appointments, and this will help reduce defaults.

“The institutions that are already using the system have reported that it has made the administrative processes so much smoother.

“We look forward to seeing results soon,” said Lindani.

The HIS implementation follows a phased approach to minimise the impact on service delivery, with patient administration and patient finance and billing, being in the first phase of the implementation and the clinical module being in the second phase.

HIS has gone live with patient administration, patient finance and billing at 34 hospitals and 33 CHCs. This implementation will have an impact on patient waiting times as the end-users acclimatise to the new system, but this should improve by the third week of implementation.

“We kindly ask for your patience and support during this exciting time of change at Far East Rand Hospital,” he said.

Patients are urged to bring their identification documents whenever they visit the hospital to ensure a smooth transition to the new system.

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