Allegheny General Hospital, West Penn Allegheny Healthcare System

Client: Allegheny General Hospital, West Penn Allegheny Healthcare System

Specialty: Gastroenterology

Product: gCare™ GI Endoscopy

Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Results: Decreased documentation time by 41%

Reduced transcription costs by 71%

Performed 6.1% additional procedures per month

Increased revenues

Increased overall staff productivity and control

Interfaces: Hospital Registration System (SMS Invision)

Allegheny General Hospital ("AGH") runs a highly competitive Gastroenterology teaching program and one of the most advanced information technology innitiatives in the nation. "We were looking for a mature procedure documentation system that was easy to learn and use", said Dr. Paul Lebovitz, director of Gastroenterology. "Our department is very focused on quality of care and productivity, so we required high-quality procedure notes for complex cases and administrative automation that was transparent to our physicians. We correctly assumed that productivity and positive financial impact would follow."

Allegheny General Hospital tried several competing solutions before selecting gMed. During the first 3 months a solid partnership was forged to integrate gCare™ Endoscopy with existing information systems and provide training and support for the Gastroenterology department. "We were able to reduce documentation time from 4:44 minutes to 2:45 minutes on average. This allowed us to perform 6.1% more cases and reduced dictation cost by $46,610 during the first year", said Daniel A. Neumann, MD from his abstract introduced at Digestive Disease Week 2003. "These savings [mean] increased productivity in endoscopy units as well as reduced medical errors and practice overhead."

"gCare™ has been well accepted because it is simple to use, easy to train, requires little support and is available anywhere using a browser" said Claudia Bowers, Manager for Clinical Information Systems at AGH. "Our most demanding users find the application mature and we enjoy a great relationship with gMed's team. Good vendor relations, mature applications and interfaces, low cost of ownership and clear value to physicians and management have been fundamental to making this project so successful."

The introduction of gCare™ Endoscopy led to partnerships in multiple AGH departments. gMed successfully introduced a pilot project for Bronchoscopy, Thoracic Surgery and is jointly developing a comprehensive Cardiology Electronic Medical Record. "gMed has been able to succeed where most vendors fail" Said Nick Valadja, Chief Information Officer for West Penn Allegheny Healthcare Systems. "They clearly understand clinical documentation systems, physicians and the value of good partnerships. I enjoy the positive trend in physician adoption and look forward to continued success."

gMed plans to measure the revenue impact of enhanced procedure coding in a second phase for the study introduced by Dr. Neumann at Digestive Disease Week 2003.