[Histonet] Downtime

[Terri Braud]

Hi Nancy - Please see my answers filled in below.  I hope that helps.  Sincerely, Terri

Terri L. Braud, HT(ASCP)
Anatomic Pathology Supervisor
Laboratory
Holy Redeemer Hospital
1648 Huntingdon Pike
Meadowbrook, PA 19046
ph: 215-938-3689
fax: 215-938-3874
Care, Comfort, and Heal

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2018 20:57:29 +0000
From: Nancy Schmitt <Nancy_Schmitt at pa-ucl.com>
Subject: [Histonet] Downtime

Hello All-
We recently experienced some downtime with our computer systems - more than the usual 1-2 hours for maintenance.  Some was isolated to our Anatomic Pathology system, and some of the downtime was organization wide.  We are an independent laboratory system that operates with Cerner CoPath for Anatomic Pathology, MLab from McKesson for LIS and we then interface with Powerchart and EPIC at our hospitals.  There is nothing like a little downtime to make you take another look at your processes.  My questions:

1.       What computer product are you currently using for Anatomic Pathology?
Answer: Sunquest CoPath Plus

2.       Are you satisfied?
Answer: Extremely

3.       Do you have your own IT group or is it maintained by outside resources?
Answer: There is an IT group for the hospital, but both myself and the office supervisor have full system manager access to CoPath as well as the servers.  With little exception, all modifications or enhancements to CoPath are made by myself or the office supervisor.  Occasionally, we need IT help when dealing with interfaces.

4.       Are you interfaced with hospital or other?
Answer: We are interfaced with Soarian Clinical and Mobile MD for reporting and Soarian Financial for billing.  All of our patient data comes from Soarian Financial, through Sunquest Clinicals to CoPath.  We also have a slide engraver interfaced. Cytology orders are entered through Soarian Clinical, but Surgical Orders are still submitted on a manual requisition.  

5.       What critical functions do you provide during downtime?  Are you giving verbal reports?  Are you typing reports on a backup laptop?
I appreciate any input you are willing to share and I am sure there will be others taking note of this valuable conversation!
Answer: During a Soarian/Sunquest/CoPath downtime, we immediately switch to a manual log for specimens, and a WORD format for our reports. Our personal PCs almost never go down together so we type on them in WORD.  Reports are manually signed by the pathologist and faxed by the office staff.  Stat procedures such as FNAs and Frozens and all report notifications are called into the physicians and documented and signed.  All of this is entered into the down system once it returns to normal.