WO2001067350A1

WO2001067350A1 - Method to enhance patient care by physicians and other clinicians

Info

Publication number: WO2001067350A1
Application number: PCT/US2001/007095
Authority: WO
Inventors: Russell C. Maulitz; Arnold J. Smolen
Original assignee: Philadelphia, Health And Education Corporation
Priority date: 2000-03-08
Filing date: 2001-03-07
Publication date: 2001-09-13
Also published as: AU2001243442A1

Abstract

A method and system for providing information and communication to a physician and other clinicians is provided.

Description

METHOD TO ENHANCE PATIENT CARE BY PHYSICIANS AND OTHER CLINICIANS

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

There are currently approximately 700,000 physicians in practice in the United States, of whom approximately 400,000 are in primary care. Nearly all of these primary care physicians have responsibility at one time or another to manage patient needs that occur outside of normal office hours. It is estimated that the average physician manages 10 calls per week, or 800 calls per year.

Physicians currently use a combination of disparate devices such as pagers, cell phones and personal digital assistants, as well as non-device solutions such as answering services, to provide for their information needs. In a typical on-call scenario, when a patient calls the medical office after hours, the call is diverted to an answering service. The service will then page the on-call physician. The physician calls back the answering service. The service provides the physician with the patient's telephone number and the physician then calls the patient. During the call to the patient, the physician does not have access to patient information such as diagnoses, current medications or allergies other than that provided by the patient. If the call results in a new or refilled prescription, the physician must obtain the name and location of the preferred pharmacy from the patient. If the patient cannot provide the pharmacy's telephone number, the physician must seek it out before calling in the prescription. These on-call encounters must then be documented in order to be billed.

Therefore there remains a need for a comprehensive and integrated system and method to provide physicians and other health care providers with the necessary information to manage the health care needs of their patients and to more effectively manage their practices .

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides a method to provide physicians and other health care providers with the necessary information to competently manage the health care needs of their patients. Advantages of the invention also include enhancement of work flow of the physician and office staff, reduction of medical errors, and improved documentation of patient encounters leading to enhanced billing and collections .

The invention utilizes the World Wide Web or "Web" . As is well known to those of skill in the art, the Web refers to both a distributed collection of interlinked, user viewable hypertext documents, commonly referred to as Web documents or Web pages, that are accessible via the Internet and client and server software components which provide user access to such documents using standardized Internet protocols. Currently, the primary standard protocol for allowing applications to locate and acquire Web documents is HTTP and Web pages are encoded using HTML. As is known to those of skill in the art, in a distributed system, a program at one site sends a request to a program at another site and waits for a response. The requesting program is referred to as the "client" and the program which responds is called the "server" . In the context of the Web, the client is a Web browser which runs on the computer of the user and the program which responds to the browser is commonly referred to as a Web server. In the present invention a Web- site which is a computer system that serves informational content over a network using the standard protocols of the World Wide Web and corresponds to an Internet domain name may be utilized. As used herein, the term is intended to cover both the hardware/software server component that serve the information content over the network and back end hardware and software components that interact with the server components to perform services for Web Site users, such as generating reports. The method of the invention, which is also referred to as MOBILEDOC, enables clinicians to access patient summary records from any location, with the aid of Internet-enabled cellular telephones and other similar devices. Initially, MOBILEDOC staff work with medical office personnel to convert existing records of the most active patients in the practice into a patient record to be stored on an off-site server. The data to be converted include, but are not limited to, basic patient demographic information, diagnoses information, medication information, allergy information, insurance information, pharmacy information and contact information. MOBILEDOC staff will train medical office personnel to add new patient records and to update existing records. These data will be stored in a database on a secure off-site server.

As part of the MOBILEDOC service, each physician in a practice will be provided with an Internet-enabled cell telephone or other similar device. The central MOBILEDOC services will provide physicians with secure and private access to their own practice database stored on an off-site (from the physician's office) server. For example, when a patient contacts the medical office after hours or on a weekend, the call will be forwarded to the voice mail of the MOBILEDOC cell phone of the on-call physician. After reviewing the patient's message, the physician can then log onto the MOBILEDOC service using the same device. After authenticating the physician, MOBILEDOC will present a list of the practice's patient list from which the physician can select the desired patient record. The desired patient record will then be downloaded. The physician can then review the patient record and then respond to the patient's call, again using the same device. The encounter is documented in real time on the MOBILEDOC database. If the call results in the requirement for a new or refilled prescription, the physician can accomplish this on the same device using the data provided by MOBILEDOC. MOBILEDOC differs from other Internet-based systems that attempt to provide physicians with access to patient records in several significant ways including wireless access enabling access anywhere, anytime; the service distills the full patient record to the elements that are required by the on- call physician to make timely and informed decisions; a hardware platform is provided that is readily accessible by the user and provides a single device solution to all of the physicians mobile information needs.

The present invention provides a comprehensive and integrated suite of software applications using a wireless cell phone or other portable device, that enables physicians and other health care providers with the ability to access, tailored, limited subsets of a patient record. The method of the present invention allows physicians to make timely and informed decisions concerning the care of their patients anywhere and anytime.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A method for providing information to a health care provider comprising: creating a record for a patient comprising demographic information, diagnoses information, medication information, allergy information, insurance information, pharmacy information and contact information; storing the patient record on a server; and providing a device for accessing the server, so that the health care provider can access the patient record stored on the server and select information from the patient record for use in providing health care to the patient.

2. A system for providing information and communication to a health care provider comprising: a server for storing patient information; a device for accessing the patient information, selecting needed information, communicating with a patient and third parties concerning patient health care and documenting the use of the information in patient care.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the third party being communicated with is a pharmacy or an insurance company.

4. The system of claim 2 wherein the stored patient information comprises demographic information, diagnoses information, medication information, allergy information, insurance information, pharmacy information and contact information.

5. A method for documenting patient encounters for a health care provider comprising: creating a record for a patient comprising demographic information, diagnoses information, medication information, allergy information, insurance information, pharmacy information and contact information; storing the patient record on a server; providing a device for accessing the server, so that the health care provider can access the patient record stored on the server and select information from the patient record for use in providing health care; and documenting the health care provider's access and use of the patient record on the server.