PSS (Patient Scheduling System)

Overview

Foot and Ankle Associates (FAA) required a customized patient scheduling systems that could accommodate functionality unavailable via off-the-shelf products. Specifically, they required an appointment screen that would mimic their manual appointment book, would allow multiple appointments to be set for each physician at the same time, would allow physician schedules to be preset, so that appointments couldn't be made when a physician was not available, would interface with their billing system and would allow users in six offices to access the system via the Internet.

The Process

Ideal consultants met with the managing partner, office manager and lead receptionist to determine the exact requirements for the system. Over the course of several meetings, conversations and email exchanges, a specification document was delivered to and approved by the managing partner. The overall requirement was to produce a scheduling system that would not be laden with unnecessary features or functionality. This requirement was easily met, however, interfacing with FAA's billing system was a unique challenge.

FAA had several years of patient data stored in a billing system called Cerner Wisdom. There was no API available to retrieve patient data, nor was any support available. The requirement was to produce a patient ledger from the data existing in the Wisdom database. Upon analysis, we discovered this database contained 119 tables. The ledger would have to be harvested from 12 of those tables (which were yet unknown) and would include everything from basic patient information to details about each visit.

Delivery

Ideal produced the application and proceeded to the testing phase. The basic scheduling functionality tested perfectly, however, the patient ledger functionality had a small problem. In roughly 10% of the ledgers, the PSS application did not match the ledgers produced by Wisdom. Ideal engaged in further analysis and after crunching the numbers, realized that the PSS system was correct and Cerner Wisdom was incorrect, therefore, patients were being under-billed.

Conclusion

PSS met all of FAA's requirements, came in on budget and is fully functional.

2008 Update

Ideal has added more functionality to PSS via an internal messaging system and a surgery scheduling system. With 6 offices, 9 physicians and over 30 employees, FAA required a HIPAA compliant system that would be integrated with the scheduling system used by all offices and staff.