Saint Francis Medical Center

Enabling HL7 Data Transfer from MEDITECH to Physician Practices

Saint Francis Medical Center in Grand Island, NE, provides central Nebraska residents with a broad range of services and programs to meet their medical needs, including alcohol and drug treatment, cancer treatment, cardiopulmonary care, hospice and home care, inpatient rehabilitation, joint replacements, surgical services and trauma services. Since opening in 1887, Saint Francis Medical Center has grown from a community hospital to a regional referral center with a medical staff of more than 100 primary care and specialty physicians and more than 1,300 employees.

Saint Francis Medical Center sought a way to get lab results from its MEDITECH system to its physician practices, starting with one practice in particular — Grand Island Dermatology. The results needed to be transferred via the HL7 standard for sharing and retrieving electronic health information, which requires a separate interface.

Saint Francis started working with its parent organization, Catholic Health Initiatives, on implementing an HL7 interface, but encountered some challenges.

“We were working on an HL7 integration that we thought would be easy, but then we learned it would take over a year to implement and be costly,” said Steven Wegenast, Applications Analyst at Saint Francis Medical Center.

“Allocating funds and resources for a project of this scope became difficult,” added Kristopher Omps, site director at Saint Francis Medical Center. “We were advised to look into what Interbit Data offered since we had already been using NetDelivery, its information distribution product, to deliver lab and radiology results to areas across the hospital.”

“MEDITECH offers an HL7 interface but it’s expensive,” continued Wegenast. “We talked to Interbit Data about what we were working on and they said they had what we needed — the Net Delivery Integration Module. It proved to be a simpler and less costly solution.”

Delivering Both Exceptional Service and the Right Solution

In a matter of weeks, Interbit Data implemented the Integration Module and assisted with coordinating it with another product Saint Francis was using to put lab report info into web form and aggregate data that is put into statistical form.

“The team at Interbit Data was very helpful and knowledgeable of MEDITECH,” said Pamela Zitterkopf, Pathology Director at Saint Francis Medical Center. “They got us on the right track to implementing an uncomplicated HL7 interface.”

“I was impressed with the service as well as the product that Interbit Data delivered,” affirmed Omps. “They were available whenever we needed them to be available and they worked through any issues that arose.”

Saint Francis Medical Center realized immediate benefits from the Integration Module, as it has with NetDelivery.

“NetDelivery is a very flexible product that provides a solution for many data and report distribution needs,” affirmed Wegenast. “The Integration Module offers another cost-effective way to deliver results.”

“NetDelivery parses reports and sends them to the printers at which they are needed, whereas when MEDITECH sends information out, it goes to only one printer,” added Zitterkopf. “There are time savings because NetDelivery automates the report distribution process, setting up reports to transmit to target recipients automatically.”

Saint Francis Medical Center does all patient report distribution through NetDelivery, which allows the hospital to obtain an improved view of what a report looks like because it is created in the PDF format.

“We now save on paper because we’re not printing reports to see what they look like before sending them,” explained Zitterkopf.
Reports are run on a daily basis and are sent to 91 recipients across 20 hospital printers. The recipients are created for each printer to ensure that reports are directed to the right printers.

Extending HL7 Report Distribution to Additional Physician Practices

Now that Saint Francis Medical Center has installed the NetDelivery Integration Module for sending lab results to Grand Island Dermatology, it can be used for delivering results to other physician practices.

“We will be including more practices as recipients of the HL7 report data,” verified Zitterkopf. “For whoever wants to receive HL7 results, this will be the product we use.”

“We could also potentially use the Integration Module with other sites that are part of the Catholic Health Initiatives organizations,” added Omps. “Interbit Data is a great, service-oriented company and we’re a happy customer, therefore we’re looking for other areas in which we can use its products and services.”