Hospital Information System Migration

This project was about integrating a new hospital information system (HIS) called “Genesis” at Mike O’Callaghan hospital. I was Senior PACS Admin in charge of a team with 2 other PACS admins to get this project completed. I acted as liasion for the Radiolgoy Department to keep communications with Network Communications department as well as the new system vendors. This project was completed within a timeframe of 5 to 6 weeks. This new system led to a more organized way of scheduling patient exams as well as keeping track of billing costs, scheduled dates, and patient history information.

A hospital information system is a database that stores patient information and is accessible for every department within the hospital. A PACS Administrator is responsible for maintaining the Hospital Information System as well as the Radiology Information System. Both require audits to ensure patient information is being correctly stored. I did a huge chunk of integrating the new HIS by ensuring specific exam codes matche of the new system matched the original codes. What these codes do is that for example lets say a patient needed an elbow x-ray; these codes enable us to select the specific exam for elbows and schedule them with the correct code so that correct billing is ensured.

I learned multiple skills such as leadership, project management, and communication while carrying out this project. It was a bit difficult to lead a team because you have to equally delegate the work and ensure everyone is one the same page of the project. Each person also needs to make sure their part is finished so that the whole team can move forward as one. It isn’t just the team that needs to stay in communication but, also the vendors, the Network Administrators, as well as important Radiology Staff like the section chiefs for each modality. Trail and error was an important aspect of this integration because there were some default methods that worked and there were default methods that needed to be updated in order for the system to correctly function.