The paper a hospital actually runs on
Before deciding what to replace, it helps to list what is there. Most hospitals that set out to go paperless find the paper is not one thing but a dozen, each kept by a different person for a different reason:
- The registration register at the front desk
- The OP chit and the prescription slip
- Lab and scan requisition slips
- The results register in the laboratory
- The ward indent book for medicines and consumables
- Pharmacy issue slips
- The theatre booking diary
- The file movement register in the records room
- The discharge summary, typed up separately
- The daily collection book
Each of these has a direct replacement in TechMediz. None of them has to go at once.
What replaces each one
Registers become registration
One registration with a UHID replaces the register, and patient search replaces looking someone up by date.
Slips become orders
Prescriptions reach the pharmacy and requisitions reach the laboratory and radiology as orders raised from the consulting room or ward.
Indent books become requests
Ward requests to the pharmacy and medicine and consumable requests to stores replace the indent book, and reduce stock as they are issued.
Diaries become availability
Theatre availability and occupancy, and ward and room availability, replace the booking diary and the phone call to the ward.
Typed summaries become records
The discharge summary is prepared at the nurse station from what was already recorded, with ICD-10 codes carried through.
Collection books become reports
Daily collection is tracked across OP, IP and pharmacy, and cancelled or discounted bills appear in their own report.
An order that works
Hospitals that finish the move tend to do it in sequence: registration first, because every later step depends on one patient having one number; then out-patient work, because it is high volume and low risk and gets doctors using the system daily; then the orders that move between departments; then pharmacy and stores; then the records room. Each stage pays for itself before the next begins.
The reasoning behind that order is set out in moving a hospital off paper: which department to do first, and the practical plan — data migration, training and go-live — in implementing hospital software without stopping the hospital.
What stays on paper, and why that is fine
Some paper is not going anywhere: signed consent forms, documents a patient brings from elsewhere, old case files, and anything the law requires on paper. A paperless hospital solution still has a records room. The difference is that the paper is no longer the only copy of what happened, and it can be found.
TechMediz labels files with a barcode and tracks each one from issue to movement to return in the medical records module. Bills, reports and summaries still print whenever someone needs a copy in hand. What changes is which copy is authoritative — and that is the change that matters.
