Since IT acquired a strategic role, MV was one of the main partners in this process

Built in 1906 on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo-SP, Hospital Santa Catarina is one of the Health institutions that has maintained a partnership with MV for more than 10 years. The use of the company's solutions in the administrative and assistance areas of the hospital has always provided efficiency in management and when assisting the patient. But it was with the adoption of SOUL MV platform in October 2017 that the institution took a significant leap in the process of digital transformation.

With the purpose of placing data in a single base, standardizing the assistance and back office structure, and provide access to information in real time, Associação Congregação de Santa Catarina, constituted by the hospital and other 16 institutions, started Project Transformation. After a diagnosis made at all units and the elaboration of an Information Technology Development Plan (PDTI), the project, which involved more than 80 people, was first put into practice at the most complex institution of ACSC: Hospital Santa Catarina. "This was the strategy so that the robustness of the work was immediately ensured", said the corporate director of Operations, Vinícius Oliveira.

Involving several companies, MV among them, Project Transformation counted on the migration from the MV 2000 system to the SOUL MV platform; the adoption of mobile solutions for purchasing management and surgical center workflow, for example; and the integration with third-party systems in order to streamline processes and access to data. "Among the several integrations carried out by MV, emphasis on the one that took place with a laboratory software. Seven years ago, we were trying this in order to obtain online test results", comments Vinícius.

With more than 600 professionals using MV solutions every day, in less than three months Hospital Santa Catarina was able to reduce duplicate registration records, solve the lack of standardization in this process, adjust the billing procedure with the adoption of the Unified Supplementary Health Terminology (TUSS) table and minimize potential disallowances. The adoption of a single database to centralize information has also been another achievement of the institution. "This way, we saved hours to interlink decentralized bases and we also placed legacy information in the same base, which enables us to have access to information of previous treatments to the patient in the electronic record and that the legacy's financial transactions have the balances updated directly at SOUL MV to avoid manual control."

With all of these accomplishments and with an assistance team being able to access by means of tablets and smartphones the electronic records in order to carry out, for example, the closed circuit of medication and bedside check-up, the institution met the prerequisites required by the largest Health informatics association in the world, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and achieved level 6 of the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) certification.

In spite of being only one step away from attaining the status of Digital Hospital, the highest level of the HIMSS certification, the challenges at Hospital Santa Catarina are not over yet. Since Project Transformation took a proportion that superseded the IT area, the technology went on to be a part of the strategic plan for the search of management improvements and for the integration of all ASCS units. According to Vinícius, in a country with large technological hurdles the main challenge is to be able to set up a network for information exchange.

"We want to connect the entire network and have the information of customers at any unit. Having the data avaiable in real time is precious for the survival of an urgent patient".

By prioritizing the improvement of processes and services provided to the patient, together with MV we have been able to perfect our operations in terms of management, clinical efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Vinícius Oliveira - Corporate Director of Operations at ACSC