ISSSTE revolutionizes Its Medical Organization

ISSSTE revolutionized Its Medical Organization By Implementing a State of the Art Hospital Information System

The new solution created using Four Js Development Tools reduces overhead while increasing the quality of patient care

Dallas & Mexico City — October 14, 2003 –– ISSSTE (Mexico City) one of the leading Mexican government organizations, which offers a variety of services to state employees today announced the implementation of a Four Js Development Tools (Dallas) solution that centralized its critical medical information into one system available throughout their network of hospitals and clinics.

Four Js has numerous high profile clients throughout Latin America, across numerous industries, which include airlines, computer companies, couriers, government organizations, manufacturers and telecommunications companies, that have adopted their solution.

Their customers include Aerolíneas Argentinas (Argentina), Carvajal (Colombia), DHL (Mexico & Venezuela), HP (Brasil), Mexican Senate (Mexico), Tramontina (Brasil), Vivo (Brasil) to name just a few.

As a key part of the Mexican government, ISSSTE is required to constantly innovate and strive to provide government employees with the best care possible. The new application not only cut costs dramatically for each medical facility, but also reduced the wait time for each patient by 50%. With Four Js solution ISSSTE was able to create a new customized solution in less than six months and within a very tight budget.

The goal of the project was to integrate an information system that could unite all the medical, hospital and patient information, more than 10 million ISSSTE member records, into one centralized database, and standardize the hospitals and clinics procedures to provide a better quality of service across their network. The new application is already running at several major hospitals and will be fully implemented by 2006 – across more than 1,200 medical facilities ranging from small clinics to large hospitals.
For the first time ISSSTE’s medical personal are able to access the centralized database through the Internet.  Patient’s records will be accessible from all the medical facilities in the ISSSTE network. Patient’s information and medical history has become remotely available to medical staff, and the subscriber identification process has been simplified.

Depending on the type of work and the level of access, the system allows users to view critical hospital information including the availability of doctors and nurses; electronic clinical history; availability of operating rooms; number of open beds; emergency services arrivals; recipe control; medication inventory; laboratory agenda; medical appointments; selected public information; hospital and medical patients costs; reports and biostatistics; management quality services indicator; and open web public services to remotely locate patients and their health status.

This was a critically needed application for ISSSTE, so the tool selection process was very delicate. “Java was considered as an alternative, but due to its complexity we were unable to get the same programming and deployment speed, or the maintenance simplicity we received with Four Js Development Tools,” said Vinicio Orea, Project Leader for ISSSTE. As this project was attempted in the past with poor results, the IT department was under tremendous pressure to succeed.  ISSSTE finally decided to use Four Js Business Development suite and was able to develop and deploy within a very tight schedule to meet their original deadlines and complete the project within the allotted budget.

“The response to the first phase of implementation has been extremely positive.  This is a huge success for ISSSTE and Four Js – hospitals are saving money, patients are receiving better care and customer service, and ISSSTE was awarded the INOVA Award by President Fox for this kind of successful project,” said David Salazar of Four Js Latin America.

The new application allows for better personnel and economic benefits through cost reductions due to better inventory control. The process standardization has already saved money by reducing costs by forty-two percent in the first few months of operation in several hospitals, and will continue to save millions.  ISSSTE is anticipating an averaged 9% saving per year for the next four years. Using this solution ISSSTE can establish for the first time with complete accuracy, the operating costs, profit or loss for each facility and department – down the cost of each patient.

The quality of service has increased and will continue to do so in the coming months. The waiting time in the hospital lobbies has also dropped by 50%, while the number of patients seen by medical staff has increased.  By making general information available on the web, lots of customer service requests have been resolved.  “This application was built to fit the specific needs of ISSSTE and this project is considered one of the most successful projects in the history of ISSSTE’s IT department,” said Raymundo Badillo of ISSSTE. “This success could only be possible with the rapid application development and deployment functionalities provided by Four Js, and next to impossible with competitive software tools.”

About Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE)