Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-02
2002-09-10
Olszewski, Robert P. (Department: 3627)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C705S051000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C434S322000, C434S323000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06449598
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to health care policy compliance and more particularly to an on-line software based system which stores health care policy documents for searching and access by qualified users, provides user self-tests, records and reports the test results to the user and to administration to insure compliance.
Personnel employed by health care related facilities, such as hospitals, home health care agencies, nursing homes, pharmacies, health maintenance organizations and the like, must follow an ever increasing number of detailed procedures, guidelines, rules, laws and/or regulations imposed by external agencies (government, regulatory and accrediting bodies) which are required for various medical and/or legal considerations. Policies are developed within institutions to guide their personnel in complying with these requirements. Because different personnel with different responsibilities in different departments are required to be familiar with multiple policies, large institutions are encountering increasing difficulty insuring that each individual is reviewing and comprehending the specific policies he must comply with.
For example, physicians in an emergency room are required by Federal law and regulations (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) to follow specific procedures for treating and/or transferring patients to other healthcare facilities. Nurses, on the other hand, may need to know policies regarding isolation procedures for patients with infectious diseases. Everyone at the hospital may have to know about requirements of the hospital's disaster plan or regulations concerning nondiscrimination and OSHA requirements.
It is difficult for the hospital to know if all personnel have reviewed and adequately understand the policies appropriate for their particular responsibilities, department, rank, etc. Further, certain governmental agencies require that health care facilities report compliance by their personnel by verifying that their personnel have in fact reviewed and demonstrate an understanding of the necessary policies.
The present invention is an on-line, software based system designed to assist health care institutions to manage the burden of maintaining and disseminating policy information to the appropriate individuals employed in various capacities throughout the organization. The system functions as a centralized reference, making policy materials available to all personnel in an easily searchable and quickly accessible form. The system also restricts access to particular materials to qualified users and keeps track of which individuals have reviewed which policies and when. It can verify each user's comprehension with self-administered tests. The test results can be summarized and reviewed by administrative personnel to determine and, if need be, report compliance statistics for individuals, groups or institution-wide or structure remedial training/education programs.
The present invention benefits an institution by increasing the quality of the policies themselves, increasing the staff's level of understanding and familiarity with policies (and therefore, compliance with them), providing an integrated methodology for creating, approving, disseminating and maintaining policies, reducing litigation risks and expenses and reducing policy management and compliance costs in terms of both dollars and manpower resources. Forms utilized by the institution (consent, test requests, purchase orders, etc.) are also maintained on the system, eliminating the costs of printing, inventorying and distributing the forms throughout the institution. The institution is always assured that the most current version of these forms will be accessed by the staff.
In general, these objectives are achieved by the system of the invention by maintaining a central database containing policies and related documents accessible on the World Wide Web or via an intranet home page by staff members who identify themselves with an appropriate log-in identification code. The documents in the database are searchable by a variety of customized parameters, enabling quick and easy access to documents on particular topics.
The document management functions of the system make users' access to policies much faster and easier than looking up policies in hard copy policy manuals. A user can quickly access the set of policies for which he is responsible, or the set of policies which meet the user's search criteria. In addition, links and searching capabilities simplify getting access to all policies relevant to an issue. This helps to quickly focus the user's attention on relevant information. The glossary and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) features provide users with additional interpretation/clarification of policy language.
Users see only the current versions of policies. Policies which are no longer current are archived, and are accessible only by a separate, restricted archival search function.
Selected users can access policies from off-site locations, an especially important function for the on-call physicians and administrator. In the event of a disaster, for example, the hospital or emergency room receives victims of a train crash, an Administrator or physician could access a hospital's emergency plan from his home or other remote location and immediately initiate appropriate response teams to treat the injured.
New or updated policies can be distributed by managers and accessed by users immediately. The costs and mistakes associated with distribution of hard copies and collection and/or destruction of obsolete policies are eliminated.
Current versions of forms are made readily available. The use of obsolete forms and the cost of maintaining a forms inventory are eliminated.
Management of the policies themselves is improved. The creation and revision of policies is streamlined. The authoring procedure helps administration establish and maintain institution wide standards for the technology and methodology used to create, maintain and organize policies. This improves consistency among policies, and assists the institution in adhering to policy content standards. Further, integration of policies with regulatory/accreditation standards is improved by the linking capability of the system.
Use of a search methodology incorporating expert knowledge and historical data improves the identification and handling of duplicate, overlapping or contradictory policies.
Automated management of the policy approval process organizes and accelerates the approval of policies. An individual whose approval is required on a policy before it is published is automatically notified, so that policy can be accessed for review. The system provides each approver with a list of policies awaiting approval, and it provides administrators with information on each policy's approval status (i.e., which approvals have been obtained and which are still pending).
Automated archiving of outdated policies creates a historical record of policies in effect at any given time. In the event of litigation in which policy compliance is an issue, archived documents can be easily accessed for response to discovery requests. The ease and efficiency of the retrieval process provides substantial cost savings.
Policy compliance is improved by the system. The system is designed to increase the level of staff awareness and comprehension of an institution's policies in several ways. A special feature enables each user to focus specifically on the policies for which he is responsible. Searching is set up to make it easy for a user to locate needed policy information, making it more likely that a user will actually refer to a policy for guidance.
Testing helps to increase policy familiarity and comprehension. A user can test his own understanding of particular policies, and test results can be stored for analysis. Results can be reported on an individual user basis to identify which policies a particular user understands and which policies required additional study. Results a
Barnett Michael H.
Eckerstrom Richard
Green Gordon M.
Kamm Richard Allen
Keenoy Robert J.
Epstein Robert L.
Harle J
James Harold
James & Franklin LLP
Olszewski Robert P.
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