PRODUCTS
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MIDWEST HEART INSTITUTE
PEORIA, ILLINOIS
Administrator’s Viewpoint
The following interview was conducted in June 2001 with Ms. Sheila Fain, Director of Quality Improvement for Midwest Heart Institute (Cardiac Consulting) based in Peoria, Illinois. Cardiac Consulting has eleven cardiac surgeons and twenty-five cardiologists on staff. Approximately 3,200 adult open heart procedures, 4,250 diagnostic, and 1,725 interventional procedures are performed each year. Cardiac Consulting uses Velos Essentials, a comprehensive clinical information system that is certified by the ACC and STS. In this interview, Ms. Fain shares her experience with Velos.
Velos: What are the major value additions you get from Velos Essentials?
Ms. Fain: I
think the single most important element is the reporting tool. It’s
so versatile. Being able to easily share information with our
physicians and staff is the most important thing for
us.
Also, data entry is very easy as compared to what we were
using before. For example, entering the data with drop down lists,
there’s minimal manual data entry. It’s great.
Also, I’ve had
a very positive experience with the Velos Customer Support
team.
Velos: From an operations perspective,
what does Velos bring to your organization?
Ms. Fain: It’s much easier for me to link quality and cost
information together – to really look at specific populations of
people for the physicians to get what they need in order to make
improvements.
For efficiency, because of how Velos uses
Excel, it’s easier for me to delegate reporting and analysis
responsibilities to other people. To just say, “click on this one,
filter a certain date range and run a report for me,” is something
we couldn’t do previously.
Velos: Why do you use a system like Velos?
Ms. Fain: The
physicians here have been very interested in benchmarking themselves
against other institutions in order to improve since the early 80’s.
So I guess that is the bottom line – they are always looking for
what they can do better. Velos allows us to do this. Many
improvement projects in the past hadn’t really collected information
in a way that the physicians found valuable and useable. This way,
they have a consistent definition from the STS and we can compare
ourselves against a group and we understand what we are looking at
…it’s an “apples- to-apples” comparison.
Velos:
Did you look at other systems when you made your Velos
decision?
Ms. Fain: Yes. There were about ten
vendors on the list when I started into this process a couple of
years ago. I did a review of all the vendors - and some I was able
to tell, either over the phone or through their literature, if they
were someone I was interested in talking to. We had presentations
from four vendors.
Velos: In that analysis,
what brought you over to Velos versus the
alternatives?
Ms. Fain: I think a major
strength is that Velos does not require proprietary mechanisms to
run the product. That was something we were looking at – things that
we could interface with and the ease of sharing information back and
forth between systems. Also, you offered the functionality of the
higher priced products at what we considered a very reasonable
price. But, it wasn’t just price-driven. We were looking at certain
high levels of functionality, and we were quite happy with what
Velos provided at what we considered was a fair
price.
Velos: Any other thoughts or
comments?
Ms. Fain: Your customer support staff
is excellent. Velos has people who have done the job our data
manager does. So, you can really speak to Velos people – they
understand what our needs are. Also, I feel that the people I have
interacted with have been very open to any suggestions I have given
them and many of them have been implemented. So, I think that is a
real plus…I don’t think you get that kind of responsiveness from
other vendors.
Velos: Thank you for your time, Sheila.
About Velos:
Velos is a leading designer and developer of next-generation healthcare information
systems. Velos offers an integrated suite of clinical,
administrative, and financial products and technology, bridging
legacy and net-centric architectures. Velos licenses its turn-key
solutions and technology, together with consulting and systems
integration services, to healthcare providers, systems vendors, and
other industry suppliers. Velos is privately held with headquarters
in Silicon Valley.
For information regarding Velos, please contact Madalynne Chapman (510-608-5744 / mchapman@velos.com or visit www.velos.com.
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