BONE MINERAL DENSITY and RippleDown OSTEO

Time-consuming reports caused bottle necking

Generating patient specific reports for Bone Mineral Density (BMD) assessments of sufficient quality to differentiate my reports from other providers took an inordinate amount of time.  The rate at which I could complete a report had become the limiting step in the operation of the BMD unit.  We needed to find a way to aggregate information from patient registrations, clinical questionnaires and the BMD scan and to automate the report generation as far as possible.   “Since implementing RippleDown^TM, my referring Doctors have been strongly appreciative of the detailed reports and as a result, the bottleneck for the growth of the unit is now the scanning process rather than the reporting system”.

Investigating knowledge management systems

A significant number of commercially available systems were investigated, but we found no suitable “off the shelf” product that could meet my requirements.  As a very poor alternative, we built an array of standardized paragraphs through the department’s current densitometer to cover every possible outcome for a case. We then manually selected and concatenated to provide a comprehensive report for the patient.  While this proved more time effective than dictating each individual report, the process remained time consuming and the output was far less patient specific than I required.  “RippleDown^TM Osteo has improved the detail and quality of my reports”.

Why we chose RippleDown™ Osteo

Following a detailed investigation of the Pacific Knowledge System’s RippleDown^TMsoftware it appeared that most of my requirements could be delivered through their standard product.  Following a detailed requirement gathering period, the PKS staff also demonstrated that they not only clearly understood the gaps between their current product and my needs, but also proved they were capable of delivering what I needed. 

“PKS proved to be as responsive during the implementation as they were when demonstrating the product to me”

Adapting RippleDown^TM to fit the clinical requirements

Minor modifications were necessary to adapt the core RippleDown^TM product to ensure an exact fit with the clinical requirements. These changes were made according to an agreed schedule and budget and were implemented on time into the BMD unit.  The technicians found the resulting RippledownTMOsteo system very easy to use, the clinical questionnaire (incorporated as one of the enhancements) is comprehensive and easily changed by technicians as needed.  

“The inclusion of RippleDown^TMOsteo has totally changed the way the BMD unit functions and has removed an onerous amount of effort from my daily duties”

Reporting time now reduced from 12 minutes to less than 2 minutes per patient

"RippleDown^TMOsteo now enables me to release a detailed, patient specific report to the referring GP, including recommendtions for treatment and future follow-up in less than 2 minutes per patient compared to the previous situation where each report took 10 – 15 minutes to complete.  

With a volume of 300 reports per month, I was devoting 58 hours per month or 13.5 hours per week to completing reports.

With the inclusion of RippleDown^TMOsteo I am now able to generate the same number of reports in 10.5 hours per month or 2.5 hours per week".