The NIH Clinical Center’s http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov new enterprise scheduling system went live in October. The new system provides real-time, accurate patient appointment information to the Clinical Research Information System (CRIS) http://cris.cc.nih.gov the medical record used for over 4,000 users at the Clinical Center. The system replaces scheduling.com, a third-party scheduling system which has been used in the Clinical Center since 2005.
Over 210,000 patient appointments are scheduled in the Clinical Center. The new scheduling system was fully implemented in the Dental Clinic and in the Rehabilitation Medical plus in the Radiology and Imaging Sciences Departments.
With the knowledge gained from the rollout in those areas, the Clinical Center has implemented Phase 1 of the enterprise scheduling system throughout the remaining 29 clinics, day hospitals, and procedure/testing areas. Phase 2 of the implementation to link medical orders to appointments and standardize the appointment request process, will be completed in early 2017.
Laboratory Medicine http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/cp at the Clinical Center is replacing their CareFusion specimen collection system with new SoftID software. SoftID is an electronic positive patient tracking solution to provide phlebotomists and nurses with an efficient, mobile, and dependable means to verify the patient’s identification for blood collection.
The new system will provide staff with a barcode label for specimens to provide greater specificity than ever before and will determine the test tube required for each test. With so many classifications of color and size for tubes, new labels place on the tubes will now have more text space to better identify the actions needed.
Also, the Department of Clinical Research Informatics and Health Information Management Department are piloting e-consenting in Radiation Oncology. As part of the pilot, the staff is using mobile devices and tablets to consent patients with an electronic fillable document that is saved and uploaded into CRIS.