Hospital patients sometimes believe the paperwork takes just as long longer, maybe than the actual medical procedure.
A system introduced at Northern Nevada Medical Center in Sparks, however, moves pre-admission paperwork online, where patients can complete it at their leisure a few days before they're scheduled to enter the hospital.
Physicians, too, can use the system known as REGIE Request for pre-registration Email Generated Information Exchange to handle some of the initial paperwork involved with scheduling a patient into the hospital.
The online system captures demographic data, insurance information and walks patients through the other questions they'd otherwise answer upon their arrival at the hospital.
The system asks, for instance, whether they have advance directives or if they need translation services.
In all, hospital officials estimate the online registration forms require about 10 minutes.
They need to be completed in one sitting because a partially completed form can't be saved and finished later.
"It's a timesaver, greatly reducing the waiting and paperwork time in the hospital," says Susan Hill,NNMC's director of marketing.
Once a patient or physician submits the REGIE application through the hospital's Web site www.nnmc.com it's stored in a Lotus Notes database, says Michelle Malizia, the hospital's information services director.
An e-mail saying that a request is ready for processing is sent to the hospital's admitting supervisor.
The supervisor can either review the request directly from the e-mail or forward it to a staff member for processing.
If the request remains unprocessed for 48 hours, REGIE sends a follow-up e-mail to the hospital's business office.
And if requests go unanswered for 72 hours, REGIE raises a flag that customer requests aren't being handled properly.
"This ensures that the facility will not have requests submitted by patients or physician office staff that do not get managed," says Malizia.
The installation of REGIE at NNMC is part of a pilot program undertaken by the hospital's parent company, Universal Health Systems.
Other test sites are hospitals in South Carolina, Florida and Washington, D.C.
The system has been designed,Malizia says, so that it can be upgraded to allow a direct interface to the hospital's registration system once an employee has validated the information.
The current pilot project requires the data to be input anew from the email into the registration system.
In the future,Malizia says, the system might include a patient portal where they can review previously entered data or the ability to integrate the REGIE system with the Soarian Scheduling systems that Siemens Medical Solutions has developed to manage hospital scheduling.
In the meantime, hospital officials say patients who want to use REGIE should complete the online admissions process at least 72 hours three full business days ahead of their scheduled check-in.
They say the service can be used for inpatient and outpatient surgery as well as diagnostic services such as a cardiac stress test or colonoscopy.
