Medical Informatics Assignment 2

1
Medical Informatics Assignment 2

• Patient Discharge System
• By King Ken Law
• Philip McCormac
• Edel Hughes

2
Introduction

• What is the patient discharge system?
• The purpose of the system
• How the system works
• Pros and cons of the system
• Conclusion

3
How the Discharge system fits in with other Main
Systems
4
What is the patient discharge system?

• Discharge system records admission, audit and
  expected date of discharge information
• Form (electronic or manual) completed by
  discharge co-ordinator
• Patient details, arrival date, admission date
• Expected date of discharge

5
Manual Discharge Form
6
Computerized form
7
The purpose of the system

• Co-ordination of discharge planning, identifies
  anticipated length of stay
• Used as predictor for effective bed management
• Provides list of expected discharges on a shift
  basis

Patient informed Medication counselling Transport
GP or District nurse informed
8
Purpose continued

• Consolidates information such as medication and
  aftercare measures
• Generates a letter to go back to the patients
  GP, or district nurse providing information on
  discharge
• Medical research
• Performance assessment
• Comparative analysis

9
How does the system work?

• GP referral PAS finds patient number or assigns
  a new one.
• Secretary checks details
• Form and estimated date of discharge note
• Treatment
• On discharge two options
• Use discharge system on pc
• Use hand written doc and pass to coding

10
Coding

• Each morning staff in the Coding department print
  off the discharges completed the day before.
• They will visit the ward and get patient records
  for any further supplementary coding
• The information is brought back and put on the
  discharge system and PAS. It is then passed to
  the consultant for final verification.
• Verification can be carried out by the consultant
  using a PC or by coding department returning form
  as a GP discharge letter.

11
Advantages of Coding Department to Doctors

• Doctors do not need to know ICD10 (Diagnosis) or
  OPCS4 (procedure) codes but rather provide as
  text.
• The minimum information such as primary diagnosis
  and procedure and the coding team will pick up
  the rest and assign the appropriate codes on PAS

12
Pros and cons of the system

• Pros
• If the consultant uses a computer instead of the
  discharge form, a list of patients to be coded
  can be easily generated saving time.

13
Pros and Cons of the system

• Cons
• Have to look up big books for codes time
  consuming
• Have to enter codes into the discharge system and
  PAS separately tedious work and repetitive
  entry prone to human error
• Coders must still go and get patient notes from
  relevant ward.

14
Conclusion

• The current system works but is flawed
• Many different systems in operation at once
• Systems do not share data forcing data to be
  entered multiple times
• Many improvments possible such as computerised
  searching for ICD10 codes instead of thick books