Initial situation

The new hospital manual was to provide employees at all LWL hospitals with access to electronic versions of all the documents required for their work at a central location. These included not just process descriptions but also auxiliary documents such as forms, templates for business correspondence, etc. In addition, the QM officers were to receive assistance with creating, publishing and updating the QM manuals. The time required to prepare for regular KTQ recertification was also to be minimised.

Reasons for SER

• Expertise in clinical environments and hospital markets
• Individual solution developed based on the needs of the LWL
• SER regional office in Münster close to LWL

Solution

• Software solution for documenting quality processes encompassing the entire life cycle of quality-related documents.
• Flexible, adaptable, practical content management system for QM authors that is proven in practice.
• Automatic indexing of new or updated documents integrated in the current QM manual by means of keywords stored in the document properties.
• All published documents can be accessed automatically using a web browser.

Volume of documents

Current: 5500 QM documents

Users

Users with write access: 40. Users with read access: approx. 2500

Implementation

• Presentation of a prototype three weeks after the kick-off meeting between SER and LWL.
• The first phase of implementation was successfully completed in mid-2010 when the electronic KTQ manual went live in the LWL hospitals of Lippstadt/Warstein, Dortmund/Hemer, Münster/Lengerich and Hamm.
• Launch the QM handbook in five additional LWL hospitals.

Benefits

• Authors, employees and KTQ visitors benefit from the KTQ hospital manual.
• Easy-to-use knowledge management tool for all QM documents.
• QM documentation can be found in a structured form in the context of the organisational unit (hospital, ward, etc.) and the hospital manual structure or unfiltered using the full-text search function.
• Previously, it took QM officers a great deal of time to search for all relevant documents “manually” and print them out. Now, all the documents required for recertification can be obtained at the touch of a button.