Sheba Medical Center- Success Story

Q-nomy delivered an appointment scheduling system that surpassed the Sheba Medical Center’s expectations, and was a cornerstone in the medical center's new IT roadmap.

About Sheba Medical Center

The Sheba Medical Center is a university-affiliated tertiary referral hospital that serves as Israel's national medical center in many fields. It is the most comprehensive medical center in the Middle East, as well as being a major medical-scientific research powerhouse that collaborates internationally with the bio-tech and pharmaceutical industries to develop new drugs, treatments and technologies, and a leading global center for medical education.

Today, the Sheba Medical Center combines six major facilities: a vast medical research complex, medical education academic campus, acute care hospital, children's hospital, women's hospital and the country's main rehabilitation hospital. Over a million patients make about 4 million visits to the Sheba Medical Center annually.

The Challenge

For over two decades, the Sheba Medical Center used an appointment scheduling solution that was part of the medical center's legacy system. In 2012, Sheba's IT management decided it was time to replace the ageing system with a modern, specialized medical scheduling solution. The main requirements set for the new solution were:

• Appointment scheduling subject to business rules and resource availability;
• Role-based access and functional permission management;
• Complete flexibility in changing calendar templates, capacity, working hours etc.;
• Support of both personal and team/department calendars;
• Friendly user interface, meeting current web user interface (UI) standards and conventions;
• Fully functional base turnkey product that supports continuous development and customization without requiring a product version upgrade.

Sheba's IT department tested a number of existing solutions, and even ran a brief pilot with a leading medical software provider, however none of these options met the requirements. Sheba Medical Center then turned to Q-nomy, and was quickly convinced that not only does Q‑nomy's solution meet and exceed all requirements, it also has a unique added value in its inherent integration of queue management functionality.

The Solution

Q-nomy provided a complete solution, comprising of Q-Flow® Patient Experience Optimization platform with customization based on a thorough analysis of the Sheba Medical Center’s needs, conducted by Q-nomy's medical process-engineering experts. In this project, Q-nomy not only implemented existing fail-proof procedures in Q-Flow, but also streamlined and improved many elements of the patient flow.

The pilot took place in two of the more complicated clinics in the Sheba Medical Center – Gastroenterology and Ophthalmology. Following the successful implementation and high level of user satisfaction, the deployment was expanded to the rest of the medical center.

The software currently operating at Sheba includes:

• Q-nomy's advanced appointment scheduling module, which enables staff to manage complex requirements, such as multiple-visit treatment plans, appointments involving the coordination of multiple resources, and so on.
• Q-nomy's Patient Flow Management, which handles the reception, routing and queuing of scheduled visits, as well as random walk-ins and urgent cases.
• Q-nomy's Brochure-On-Demand, which is used to send each invitee a personalized leaflet containing details of the appointment and planned procedure, directions and additional useful information.
• A specially customized solution for the Operating Room: a "drag and drop" interface simplifying the scheduling of the multiple stages involved in an operation (consultation, preparation, etc.)

The Results

After a full year of operation, in which Q-Flow was deployed in over 100 business units of the medical center, it is clearly a success:

• High level of user satisfaction across staff members, indicating higher usability and simpler operation compared to the previous solution.
• Significant reduction in workload, due to automating many steps in the scheduling process and patient flow.
• Improved level of control over department calendars, which enables efficient management of resources and treatment capacity.

The solution's simplicity and flexibility were high above staff expectations, thus the Sheba Medical Center decided to utilize Q-nomy appointment scheduling for other applications outside the medical departments; for instance, it is now being used to book rooms at the local maternity hotel.

The Sheba Medical Center now plans further expansion of its use of Q-Flow, to take advantage of the system's back-office, workflow, BPM and resource planning modules.

Q‑nomy is considered a cornerstone in the medical center's roadmap towards technological leadership, greater efficiency, and improved overall patient experience.

Learn more about Q-nomy’s patient experience management solutions