Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre

About Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is a state-of-the-art acute care facility serving the healthcare needs of people living in Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario. An architectural showpiece situated on a landscaped site of nearly 70 acres, the Regional Health Sciences Centre is a stunning award-winning design that is functionally efficient. There are 375 acute care beds. The spacious patient rooms each have a large shower with wheelchair accessible washrooms. The facility is air-conditioned with special “negative pressure” rooms strategically located to accommodate people who may be suffering from a communicable disease. Call thunder bay.gif

Enhancing the Functionality of an Integrated Clinical Information System (CIS) Using Summit Scripting Toolkit

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC) purchased the Summit Toolkit product to automate various day-to-day processes within our CIS - Meditech Client/Server. The following provides a brief overview of how TBRHSC has utilized scripting to facilitate these projects.

Special Project #1 - Merging Two Meditech Facilities into One

In November of 2002, TBRHSC needed to merge two separate facilities in our Meditech C/S system. Using scripting, much of the required setup was completed prior to the go live date and saved approximately 800 hours of manual data entry. Cost savings of $20,000. Scripting also significantly shortened our go live downtime. All inpatients were discharged from the two old facilities, the rooms were edited for use in the new facility, and then the inpatients were admitted to the new facility, all within a couple of hours using two computers running simultaneously.

Also accomplished via scripting:

• Created 4,400 appointments in new facility
• Pre-admitted 1,280 recurring accounts to new facility
• Created 3,350 appointments for those recurring accounts in the new facility
• Pre-admitted 800 non-recurring accounts to the new facility
• Cancelled 7,950 appointments in the two old facilities
• Pre-admitted 400 inpatients to the new facility
• Discharged 400 inpatients in the two old facilities
• Updated 202 MIS Room dictionary entries with new MIS Locations
• Admitted 400 pre-admitted inpatients to the new facility
• Reversed and rebatched charges from 400 old facility accounts to new facility accounts
• Created 116,000 MRI chart portions in new facility

Special Project #2 - Integration of Cancer Centre

In January of 2004, the Northwest Ontario Regional Cancer Centre (NWORCC) was mandated to merge with TBRHSC. The NWORCC was already using the TBRHSC Meditech system, but in a separate facility and had set up approximately 5,000 patient accounts. These accounts were automatically created in the TBRHSC facility via a script running over a few days, saving at least 250 hours of manual data entry. Cost savings of $6,250.

Special Project #3 - Move to New Hospital

In February of 2004, TBRHSC is moving from two buildings to one new hospital site. Once again, scripting is being used to save time that would have been spent doing manual data entry.

Tasks accomplished/to be done via scripting:

• Created new pharmacy inventory 2,300 entries
• Updating OE device dictionary 2,000 entries
• Created 3,500 appointments
• Update 100,000 chart locations