COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A recently-built hospital in Valencia, Spainattributes its profit margin and efficiency to a care managementplatform its doctors and nurses can access from their mobile phones.The hospital is exhibiting its healthcare solutions at the World ofHealth IT show here in Copenhagen.
Hospital de Torrevieja uses a remote care managing tool thatfacilitates SMS-based communication and reporting, allowing doctors andmanagers to receive updates on patient care and business activity.
The 220-bed hospital sees roughly 170,000 patients annually andhas 300 doctors on staff. All of the hospital's doctors and nurses -and some of their patients - use the Florence applications suite tomanage information.
Hospital de Torrevieja, which opened its doors in October 2006,is the second hospital in Valencia to adopt a model of providingprivate service within a public healthcare system, said Luis Barcia,the hospital's chief executive officer. The Spanish governmentsubsidizes 70 percent of the cost of care for each patient treated atTorrevieja. Four other such hospitals are planned for Madrid.
Barcia receives his Florence Balancing Scorecard reports hourly on hisApple iPhone. The Florence application allows him to see the number ofadmitted patients, number of available beds, outpatient ratios, waitinglists and other metrics. "The SMS feature works on any phone," henoted, but in order to access patient records remotely from a mobile -as Torrevieja's physicians do - a Windows-based mobile device must beused.
On the patient end, appointment schedules and correspondencewith the hospital administration are available through Florence. Butthe patient's ability to alert the hospital of an emergency prior toarrival has been the key aspect of patient involvement in the Florencesystem.
"Patients can send an SMS or email marked 'emergency' and wecan send them the waiting time and availability in the hospital," saidBarcia. He added that some 150 emergency patients that would havepreviously come straight through the front doors of the hospital haveused the SMS feature, allowing the hospital to assess and manageconditions remotely prior to the visit.
"We have the highest level of outpatient activity (in ourregion) at 57 percent, and we have three times the surgical activitywith 20,000 operations annually compared with other hospitals." Barciasaid. Patient satisfaction surveys and local government tests havegiven the hospital high marks. The hospital currently turns over 4 or 5percent profit with EBIDTA of about 60 million euros.
Torrevieja's financial success may serve as a strong examplefor startup healthcare institutions dedicated to information technologyand business transparency. The hospital posts all of the costs of itsprocedures and information about clinical processes on its Web site,Barcia said.
"It would be impossible to have all this efficiency without our technology," Barcia said.
