Situation
An internationally known specialty hospital and Cancer Research Center receives patients and conducts cancer clinical trials over a wide geographical area. To conduct trials it relies on patient referrals from specialized physicians over a broad geographical area.
Problem
Highly targeted and specialized clinical trials required communicating with new physicians treating specific types of cancer in order to build populations of patients sufficient to support a trial. Information about these referring physicians had to be developed and maintained over lengthy periods of time because of the duration of trials and the evaluation of outcomes. At the same time referring provider information was maintained in separate hospital systems for clinical and billing purposes.
The Center was experiencing increasing difficulty and cost in forming clinical trials, particularly for rarer forms of the disease. At the same time, given the length of time for both trials and inpatient treatments, changing referring physician information would not be captured and updated consistently to maintain the accuracy of medical records.
FolioMed Problem Solving
FolioMed was initially asked to help in the recruitment of clinical trials.
Because FolioMed’s proprietary database consisted of over 300 specific physician medical specialties, together with the ability to identify primary, secondary and tertiary specialties of the physician, the center was able to focus communications on only those physicians specializing in treating patients that would be eligible for specific trials. Because up-to-date information was required, the FolioMed solution was to provide a monthly electronic file to the center each month that focused only on those specialties appropriate to a particular clinical trial.
In order to match the clinical trials to the patient care and payment systems, FolioMed data was directly loaded into the Center’s patient care and financial systems using FolioMed’s database structure. This improved scheduling, patient registration, and billing operations. However since these systems were not integrated with the medical records and transcription systems, a multi user FolioMed IS (internet) application was employed to maintain provider data for medical records, consultation requests and transcription.
The Center decided to utilize the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and transcription system of a joint venture partner, a tremendous cost saving advantage. However, this required an integrated central provider database. FolioMed’s solution consisted of the following:
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Utilizing FolioMed’s software tools, FolioMed’s database was matched to the Center’s provider database eliminating all redundant, duplicate, inactive and out of area records.
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FolioMed’s reference, census database thus became the facility wide source for provider data for all non-credentialed physicians.
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To maintain an up-to-date provider file, encrypted files of all provider database changes by the Center are electronically transferred to FolioMed on a bi-weekly basis. FolioMed then verifies all Center changes and together with provider changes initiated by FolioMed an encrypted file is transferred back to the Center in a reciprocal scheduled exchange.
Benefits
FolioMed’s solutions enabled the Center to substantially lower clinical trial development and management costs. Enhanced and more effective communications strengthened their relationship with referring physicians. FolioMed’s provider data solution also allowed the Center to avoid the cost and the implementation of a separate dedicated EMR. In testimonials the Center complimented FolioMed saying that “ FolioMed was helping to save lives” because of the increased ability to form clinical trials through use of the FolioMed database.