With an area of influence covering 23 hospitals and 86 health centres, spread across a land area of nearly 24.000km2, and serving a population of about 1,800,000 inhabitants, the issues of process organization and standardization are of special importance as items for promoting efficiency and the rational allocation of resources
Needs of organizing and improving the quality of the process were identified particularly in the planned transportation of patients, thus leading to the implementation of SGTD solution developed by Link Consulting, since this solution matched the requirements and it was a proved solution being developed in ARS in Alentejo.
Dra. Regina Bento, Vowel of the Executive Board in ARS Centre, stated «after exploring deeply and considering the experience being developed in ARS Alentejo, we understood it was a unique solution in the national market and effectively met the requirements of ARS Centre.»
The solution for Managing Patients Transportation is an information system supporting the activities and the embedded management of the process for planned transportation of patients, since the order and up to the invoicing and integrating the different stakeholders. When the family doctor identifies the patient requirement for transportation, the process is started. The transportation requisition is grouped with other existing requisitions, being generated transportation groups for being accepted by the Transportation Entities, previously integrated in the system, and according with their area of action. On the side of the Providing Entities, i.e. hospitals and agreed entities, the information will become available on the patients who daily arrive by ambulance to the institutions, and the information about the time of entry and exit of the patients must be recorded on the same platform. Using this data, the platform will automatically generate the accounting for the transportation, streamlining the payment process to the Transportation Entities.
When asked about the advantages of having information system integrating all the information related to patients transportation, Dra. Regina Bento states: «with all stakeholders’ working in the same platform, the process will be more transparent, since the base rules are set from the beginning and are everyone knows them. On the other hand, all the information relevant to the process is available at any time, in the information system with access according to the profile to authorized users, eliminating the paper transportation credentials, and the control and information privacy issues»
Adopting a crossed approach to the transportation management process, enables an integrated answer to the challenges of rationalization and efficiency in the management of the health functional units, standard criteria for scheduling patients transportation, charging the suitable entities and confirming the treatment or consultation was effective, besides an effective control for accounting related to the providers of the transportation service .
