Mackenzie Health’s Innovation Institute (Mi2) is launching an Innovation Unit in partnership with Sodexo Canada to expand the interconnectivity of IT systems that manage service fulfillment to improve health care through greater efficiencies and patient-centred flexibility.
Sodexo is working closely with the hospital to expand the automation of non-clinical hospital services at Mackenzie Health to deliver better patient-centred care with greater efficiency and flexibility. Some of the impacted support services include environmental services, patient transport, bio med and physical plant maintenance, central equipment distribution, security and patient food services.
The project involves upgrading the hospital’s call centre operations, which directs internal service requests to the correct inpatient unit, and integrating the call centre’s IT systems with the hospital’s electronic medical record, which manages patient scheduling. The goal is to get these systems as close to “one-touchpoint” service fulfillment, which frees up the time of clinical staff to spend more time caring for patients.
As part of the envisioned smart system, a single command from a physical or nurse entered into the hospital’s patient flow system will automatically list the entire range of support services necessary to fulfill the request. Each automated digital request will be time stamped, scheduled and directed to the appropriate staff using mobile devices.
“Our objective is to go beyond simply using technologies to achieve a truly ‘smart’ support service delivery model that is intuitive, patient-centred and highly efficient,” said Richard Tam, Mackenzie Health’s executive vice-president and chief administrative officer, in a press release. “The intent is to create a non-clinical support service environment that is context aware, highly personalized to patient needs and adaptive to change. We chose to partner with Sodexo because of its proven technological leadership and passion for embracing change to achieve continuous improvement.”
This expansion of the hospital’s innovation strategy is expected to establish new healthcare industry support service standards that will be shared with other hospitals in the province and beyond.
