Introduction

Good afternoon, senior management of Singapore Regional Hospital. We

are from Whitestar Computing, one of the sub-contractors engaged to help
develop the software component of the new information system. We are here to
present to you our findings based on the information and feedback that we have
gathered from your staff to get a better idea of the current system in place.
From the information that we have gathered, we are going to propose a
number of key features for the new system and explain their benefits over the
current system. Some of them had been suggested by some of your staff to help
them with their work.
We welcome your feedback on any issues raised in this presentation as
ultimately, this new system will be used by your staff and we want to cater them
as closely as possible to the desired requirements.
Our presentation will cover the current business process, the challenges
that the process bring and the features of the new system that will help to
overcome these challenges. We will also cover the budget breakdown in the
development on the various components such a system and the projected
timescale that is needed to develop the different aspects of the system.
In line with its mission is being a professional caregiver, proving excellent
environment and affordable pricing for its patients, we will design our system
based on the mission statement and the desired outcomes based on our
interviews with the hospital staff. We are confident that the staff will familiarize
themselves quickly with the new system and find it indispensable in their daily
work.
Current Business Process
Registration
This process involves the patient who is a first timer providing the clinic with
information such as IC number, next-of-kin details and/or any drug allergies.
For subsequent appointments, the patient just need to show their ID to
register. The records can be found by looking for the patients ID. Records are
retrieved manually. A SMS reminder will be manually sent by the receptionist 2
days in advance for patients who have made appointments.
Booking
The payment system book keeping(accounting) is using Microsoft Excel.
Payment process is performed by initial collection of payment from the patient,
who
is
allow
to
select
the
mode
of
payment
(CASH/Credit
Card/Medisave/Others). They can also purchase by instalments. The amount
payable can also be determined by age group or job status. If the patient has
insurance, the payment will be from AIA and Medishield. If a patient missed
payment or fail to pay the instalments, a reminder will be emailed to the
patient. There is no way to get the money back if the patient is foreigner who
defaulted the payment.

Reports
The accounting records are maintained by using Excel sheet and sometimes pen
and paper. Receipts are recorded and handed over to the accountant for
bookkeeping purposes. Receptionists will generate monthly reports to be handed
to the doctors each month. These records are to be kept between 5-10 years for
audit purposes. Reports are generated on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Some of the reports are required to be signed by the doctor.
Phone-In/Walk-In Appointment and Cancellation
Most of the patients who come are referred from GP or other doctors and there
are few walk-in patients. Most appointments have been pre-booked. If there are
walk-ins, the receptionists will make the necessary arrangements such as finding
doctors with available slots and take note of patients requests and preferences.
Staff will then slot them into the available slots, or move-up existing
appointments as they arrive. If cancellations are made by the doctor, the
receptionists will try to call the affected patient immediately and try to fix an
alternate appointment or schedule for the patient to see a different consultant
on the same day.
Call to arrange the ward/food
For patient admission to the hospital, the receptionist will contact the wards to
check the bed availability. They will then have to accompany the patient to the
ward, bring the medical record to the ward nurse to justify why patient needed
to be admitted.
Current Problems
Double entry for registration
The patient will fill up information on a piece of paper during registration and the
nurse will copy the information on to the form provided. This is repetitive work
as both patient and receptionist are doing the same thing.
Difficulty finding medical records
It is time consuming when searching for a record in big cabinets of files,
especially old records when patients who had not visited the clinic for a long
time suddenly turn up for consultation.
Appointment by phone-in/walk-in
It is difficult for doctor to plan her schedule for meetings and consultation time
with patient as there are no notification system of the patients appointment
time or cancellation of the appointment. The doctor needs to keep checking with
the receptionist/nurse with the patients appointment time.
Payment tracking problem
It is difficult to track payment from patients as there are different modes of
payment (cash/credit card/insurance). The payment is recorded manually on a
receipt which record into excel sheet.
Reports generating manually
Reports are generated manually on MS Excel and it usually takes some time and
the process is rather tedious and ad-hoc.

SRHIS Key Features

Online Appointment Management System
This system allows the users to check the doctors appointment online, this
feature allows them to better schedule their appointment time.
Registration System (Walk-in/Returning)
For the walk-in patient (first time user), the nurse will help enter the patient
details into the system. For the returning patients, the nurse/receptionist just
need to scan and check for the patients information.
Booking System
This will be connected to an external system in another department (Ward
Department) to book ward and order food for the patient.
Scheduling System
The doctor can check his/her schedule of the day without having to check the
nurse. The system can also remind the doctor about scheduled appointments 30
mins before the actual appointment time.
Billing System
The receptionist can search and enter all the treatment types and medications
prescribed by the doctor and generate receipt through the system. The
accountant can access the receipt from this system also for bookkeeping and
audit purposes.
Generating Reports System
The accountant can use this system to generate ad-hoc reports. This system can
also automatically generate daily/weekly/monthly reports.
Medical Records Management System This system will be managed mainly
by the doctor to search/add/update the medical conditions as well as allergies of
the patients. This also can generate medical reports.
Benefits
The new IT system will benefit the hospital in many ways. Firstly, it will save the
hospital staff a lot of time searching and retrieving records and generating of
reports.
It will also reduce a lot of duplication such as entering patients information in
manual forms.
When creating appointments or checking doctors schedules, staff can access
them online without having to check with the respective departments first.
As mentioned above, patients records can be easily retrieved during patients
consultations with the doctors and images such as MRI or CT scans can also be
attached. Doctor can enter remarks regarding patients diagnosis and update the
record easily.

Reports can also be easily generated and they can be set to generate
automatically following end-of-cycle or generated manually whenever necessary.

Project Budget
The cost of the project is divided into the following areas of development:
$450,000 to develop the software for SCMIS
$500,000 to develop the PC clients
$1,000,000 to develop the software for research/surgery support
$80,000 for training of hospital staff to use the system.
Project Timescale
Our project timeline is as follows. We will take about 6 months to develop the
system for research and surgery support. This will include the time taken to
customize and develop standard medical analysis software and advanced
research software and their installation. The hardware components however, will
be developed by main contractor so we will need time for software testing after
installation.
We will also spend about 6 months developing the application software that will
be installed on all the clients pc hardware which we are told comprises 1000
machines in total. The hardware will be provided by the main contractor so we
will test the machines after installation.
Finally, we are going to spend about 9 months developing the SCMIS system for
all the 5 major specialist clinics. This system will support and manage the
provision of healthcare to the clinics patients. There are 3 main areas that we
will focus on:

Registration and medical records maintenance

Patient Billing
Appointment/warding workflow
Summary

Improve business workflow

In short, the new system will significantly help the hospital staff in the daily
operations. Patient management will be more efficient and effective by
improving the business workflow which enables the medical professionals to
focus their attention on the patients and their recovery at the hospital rather
than administrative matters. Tasks such as prescribing medication at the
Pharmacy or registering patients for ward admission can be done easily through
the system without having to check with the other departments first. This will
reduce waiting times for patients and ensure that the hospital can increase its
patient handling capacity.
Improve record management
Sensitive or confidential information such as medical records, research and
billing records will be securely kept in servers rather than files and cabinets,
which will allow for easy retrieval or updating where necessary. Research done at

the hospital will be seamlessly integrated into a research database that can
shared amongst the medical researchers as with other time sensitive information
such as incident of outbreaks or updating of medical information such as
discovery of new allergies or advancements in medications or medical
techniques. Such timeliness in information management will prepare the hospital
in managing any incidents such outbreaks where other medical authorities or
agencies such as the Ministry of Health needs to be quickly informed.
As mentioned previously, end-of-cycle reports such as monthly or quarterly
reports can also be easily generated online for the hospital management for
strategic and policy planning purposes.
Better tracking of payment
Where payment records were previously updated manually using Excel
spreadsheets, the system will be able to track payments made by patients and
update their payment status accordingly. Patients who have also made partial
payments or payments by instalments will have their records updated
automatically whenever payments are made and reminder letters can be
automatically generated to be sent to them. For patients who pay using credit or
debit cards, the system will be linked up with other payment gateways such as
VISA\MasterCard\Nets or with other third party agencies such as CPF Board if
patients use their Medisave to pay for medical procedures. This will ensure that
all payments are properly tracked and recorded regardless of payment methods
for auditing and accounting purposes. This will allow the hospital to focus more
on their core mission and vision rather than spend too much energy and time on
collecting and sorting payments from patients.
With that, we have come to the end of our presentation. We hope that we have
explained in greater detail our project scope in the development of this project
and as mentioned we welcome any feedback or any clarification needed.

Thank you.