2006: A Great Year for Windows IT Innovation

HONORABLE MENTION
Edward Bond
Database Analyst, Baylor Health Care System, Dallas, Texas

Email: edwardb@baylorhealth.edu

Automated Medical Coding
After developing an automated procedure-coding system for Baylor Health Care System, veteran DBA Ed Bond probably knows more than many healthcare professionals about invasive-cardiac and peripheralvascular procedure codes. Traditionally, medical coders manually derive the correct codes for more than 300 distinct cardiac procedures from documentation entered in a patient's chart. Missing information often prevents coders from entering the correct codes. The hospital asked Ed to assess whether automating the coding and enhancing electronic charting could eliminate such errors.

Ed first researched charge coding, which took several months, then developed algorithm specifications for all the codes and wrote the application. Data entered into a patient's chart via the hospital's computerized system is sent to the server via FTP. ParserQC, the Visual Basic (VB) utility that Ed wrote, monitors the FTP folder on the server and retrieves data as it appears. ParserQC parses the information necessary to derive codes from the charted notes and temporarily stores the data in a Microsoft Access database. The utility checks for required information, derives the charge codes from information stored in a SQL Server database, produces the patient reports for the medical record, and stores the derived data in the SQL Server database.

After using the new system for more than 18 months, Baylor Health Care System has greatly improved the accuracy of complex cardiac procedure coding. Doctors like the system because they no longer need to dictate procedure reports; ParserQC derives reports from the charted information. Lab staff spend less time manually deriving charge information and have less paperwork to process. "The system has decreased costs associated with charge coding, increased revenue [by reducing the number of rejected insurance claims] and accuracy of patient billing, and enabled clinical staff to spend more time on patient care," says Ed .

HONORABLE MENTION
Joshua Kunken
Systems Administrator,
The Scripps Research Institute,
La Jolla, California

Email: joshkunken@gmail.com

Sharing Outlook Calendars Via SharePoint
Collaboration is the lifeblood of The Scripps Research Institute, a biomedical research organization that consists of a network of geographically dispersed laboratories. Lab members needed an easy way to share information in their Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 calendars. "We use Office 2003 and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 like you have no idea, and we like out-of-the box solutions," says Josh Kunken. "But we couldn't use Outlook to post messages on the portal. We wanted to be able to create and modify SharePoint list items, such as events, in our Outlook calendars, and we also wanted those items to appear on the portal."

Josh looked to Exchange Server 2003 public folder calendars to provide the solution. "Via AD, Exchange collects the mailbox information, contacts, and global addresses," he says. Josh's solution uses Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) code that executes real-time XML queries by using WWW Distributed Authoring and Version (WebDAV) to retrieve appointments within a particular data range stored in public folder calendars on the Exchange server. A C# application that Josh wrote performs similar real-time XML queries and presents the results on the Share-Point portal. (XML queries are similar to SQL Server database queries.) Josh used ASP.NET?enabled Web Parts to provide the UI component that lets a SharePoint user view an item posted to the public folder calendar. "When you click an item in the list [of calendar items], it opens up the email content," he says. Items are color coded by date (e.g., expired items are one color; upcoming items are another).

Josh also assigned each calendar its own email address, so that an Outlook user can post an item in the public folder calendar by sending an email message to it. Posting a calendar item via either method adds the item to the user's Outlook calendar and SharePoint simultaneously. "We also set up links on the DNS tables and used the relay between our Exchange server and the Internet, so that users outside of Scripps Research could post to the calendars as well," Josh says.

"These applications markedly contributed to improving performance of colleagues and external collaborators," says Josh. "By centralizing critical information relevant to our group on our SharePoint portal, we've improved online participation and communication and have become efficient in disseminating information to the group."

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