Multiple resource planning system

• US 8,612,250 B2
• Filed: 12/21/2011
• Issued: 12/17/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/25/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Virtual Radiologic Corporation (Mednax Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Virtual Radiologic Corporation (Mednax Incorporated)
• Inventors: Backhaus, Brent, Lusic, Lorna, Ebesu, Dean
• Primary Examiner(s): PAULS, JOHN A
• Application Number:
  US13/333,767
• Publication Number:
  US 20120245949A1
• Time in Patent Office: 727 Days
• Field of Search: 705/2
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06311 Scheduling, planning or task assignment for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/40 for processing medical images, e.g. editing
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms

Abstract

A system for managing remote doctor medical request workflow may include a workflow module that optimizes assignments of medical requests to remote doctors based on parameterized doctor and scheduling information and may further include a forecasting module that predicts the hospital credentials, state licenses or doctors needed to fulfill a projected volume of future medical requests. In one embodiment, radiologists are parameterized and then matched with requests for radiological readings based on information extracted from DICOM image headers and merged with associated information contained in a medical work order. In this embodiment, the radiologists are parameterized based on their locations, schedules, hospital credentials, state licensing, compensation metrics, and performance metrics and incoming requests for review of CT scans and the like are filtered based on the parameterized radiologist information to identify one or more radiologists who are to fulfill the medical request.

Claims

1. A method for selecting a medical resource in a medical resource assignment workflow, comprising electronic operations performed by a medical resource workflow computer system comprising a computer processor and memory, the electronic operations comprising:

processing an electronic medical request for evaluation of medical imaging data, the electronic medical request provided for a medical diagnostic imaging procedure conducted at a medical facility, and the medical diagnostic imaging procedure producing the medical imaging data;

determining resource information associated with a plurality of medical resources designated to perform medical imaging evaluations, the resource information provided from one or more of;

resource scheduling data, resource classification data, resource location data, resource preference data, resource performance data, resource compensation data, resource expertise data, resource request volume, resource contract term data, resource connectivity data, and resource subspecialty data;

determining one or more resource qualifications of the medical facility that must be satisfied by resources of the plurality of medical resources for evaluation of the medical imaging data, using a medical facility identifier of the medical facility, the one or more resource qualifications provided from one or more of;

resource licensing data maintaining medical resource licensing status of respective resources of the plurality of medical resources in a licensing jurisdiction including the medical facility, or medical facility credentialing data maintaining medical resource credentialing status of respective resources of the plurality of medical resources with the medical facility; and

selecting a medical resource from the plurality of medical resources for receipt of the electronic medical request, the selecting using the resource information, wherein the selected medical resource satisfies the one or more resource qualifications of the medical facility.

2. The method of claim 1, the electronic operations further comprising:

receiving the medical imaging data at the medical resource workflow computer system; and

transmitting the electronic medical request and the medical imaging data to a client device that is accessible by the selected medical resource.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected medical resource is a radiologist, wherein the electronic medical request includes a radiological read request, and wherein the medical imaging data is produced from a radiology imaging modality.

4. The method of claim 1, the electronic operations further comprising:

receiving the electronic medical request from the medical facility, wherein the electronic medical request includes the medical facility identifier;

wherein the electronic medical request includes a radiology order.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic medical request includes an image from the medical imaging data, an order for evaluation of the medical imaging data, or both.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic medical request includes an HL7 order associated with the medical diagnostic imaging procedure.

7. The method of claim 6, the electronic operations further comprising:

extracting data from the HL7 order, and using the data from the HL7 order in the selecting of the medical resource.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the medical facility identifier is provided by metadata in the medical imaging data, and wherein the medical imaging data is transmitted to the medical resource workflow computer system.

9. The method of claim 1, the electronic operations further comprising:

determining a complexity factor for the electronic medical request using a patient age, the medical facility identifier, the body region, or combination thereof, and using the complexity factor in the selection of the medical resource.

10. The method of claim 1, the electronic operations further comprising:

filtering the plurality of medical resources to a subset of the plurality of medical resources based on at least one of medical facility schedule data or medical facility location data.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein filtering the plurality of medical resources includes receiving parameterized resource information associated with the medical facility identifier.

12. The method of claim 10, the electronic operations further comprising:

receiving the medical facility schedule data and the medical facility location data.

13. The method of claim 10, the electronic operations further comprising:

identifying a number of previously assigned medical requests that a medical resource has completed and using the number to filter the medical resource in the plurality of medical resources.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the resource information is provided from resource availability information determined from a combination of:

the resource scheduling data, the resource performance data, and the resource request volume.

17. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 5, the operations further comprising:

receiving the electronic medical request from the medical facility, wherein the electronic medical request includes an image from the medical imaging data, an order for evaluation of the medical imaging data, or both.

15. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium including instructions which when executed by a computing device cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

processing an electronic medical request for evaluation of medical imaging data, the electronic medical request provided for a medical diagnostic imaging procedure conducted at a medical facility, and the medical diagnostic imaging procedure producing the medical imaging data;

determining resource information associated with a plurality of medical resources designated to perform medical imaging evaluations, the resource information provided from one or more of;

resource scheduling data, resource classification data, resource location data, resource preference data, resource performance data, resource compensation data, resource expertise data, resource request volume, resource contract term data, resource connectivity data, and resource subspecialty data;

determining resource qualifications of the medical facility that must be satisfied by resources of the plurality of medical resources for evaluation of the medical imaging data, using a medical facility identifier of the medical facility, the resource qualifications provided from one or more of;

resource licensing data maintaining medical resource licensing status of respective resources of the plurality of medical resources in a licensing jurisdiction including the medical facility, or medical facility credentialing data maintaining medical resource credentialing status of respective resources of the plurality of medical resources with the medical facility; and

selecting a medical resource from the plurality of medical resources for receipt of the electronic medical request, the selecting using the resource information, wherein the selected medical resource satisfies the resource qualifications of the medical facility.

16. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 15, the operations further comprising:

acquiring the medical imaging data; and

transmitting the electronic medical request and the medical imaging data to a client device that is accessible by the selected medical resource.

18. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 15, the operations further comprising:

processing an HL7 order associated with the medical diagnostic imaging procedure;

extracting data from the HL7 order; and

factoring the data from the HL7 order in the selecting of the medical resource.

19. A medical image order management system, comprising:

a data module device configured to maintain medical facility information associated with a plurality of medical facility locations and medical resource information associated with a plurality of medical resources, the medical facility information being associated with a respective medical facility identifier and including one or more of;

location data, credentialing data, and facility preference data, and the medical resource information including one or more of;

resource scheduling data, resource classification data, resource location data, resource preference data, resource performance data, resource compensation data, resource expertise data, resource order volume, resource contract terms, resource connectivity data, resource location data, resource subspecialty data, and resource licensing data;

an image server device configured to receive image data associated with an electronic medical request from the medical facility;

an order server device configured to receive orders associated with the electronic medical request from the medical facility; and

a workflow module device configured to receive the medical resource information and a medical facility identifier from the electronic medical request, and configured to use the medical resource information and the medical facility identifier to filter the electronic medical request to a selected medical resource to receive the image data using the medical resource information from the data module device;

wherein operations to filter the electronic medical request to the selected medical resource include determining one or more resource qualifications of the medical facility that must be satisfied by resources of the plurality of medical resources for evaluation of the image data, the one or more resource qualifications provided from one or more of;

the resource licensing data maintaining medical resource licensing status of respective resources of the plurality of medical resources in a licensing jurisdiction including the medical facility, or the credentialing data maintaining medical resource credentialing status of respective resources of the plurality of medical resources with the medical facility.

20. The medical image order management system of claim 19, wherein the image server device is provided by a Picture Archive Communication System (PACS) configured to digitally store, transmit, and display medical images from a radiology imaging modality.

21. The medical image order management system of claim 19, wherein the order server device is provided by a Radiology Information System (RIS) configured to digitally store and manage requests for a doctor to interpret images from the image data and return a diagnostic report.

22. The medical image order management system of claim 19, further comprising a caching module device, the caching module device configured to generate a pre-populated order using DICOM data extracted from the image data, and transmit the pre-populated order to the order server device.

23. The medical image order management system of claim 19, wherein the medical resource information used by the workflow module device is a combination of:

the resource scheduling data, the resource performance data, and the resource request volume.

24. A method for selecting a medical resource in a medical resource assignment workflow, comprising electronic operations performed by a medical resource workflow computer system comprising a computer processor and memory, the electronic operations comprising:

processing an electronic medical request for evaluation of medical imaging data, the electronic medical request provided for a medical diagnostic imaging procedure conducted at a medical facility, and the medical diagnostic imaging procedure producing medical imaging data;

determining resource information associated with a plurality of medical resources designated to perform medical imaging evaluations, the resource information provided from one or more of;

resource scheduling data, resource classification data, resource location data, resource preference data, resource performance data, resource compensation data, resource expertise data, resource request volume, resource contract term data, resource connectivity data, and resource subspecialty data;

determining one or more resource qualifications of the medical facility that must be satisfied by resources of the plurality of resources for evaluation of the medical imaging data, of the plurality of medical resources, using a medical facility identifier of the medical facility, the one or more resource qualifications provided from one or more of;

resource licensing data, medical facility credentialing data, and medical facility preference data;

selecting a medical resource from the plurality of medical resources for receipt of the electronic medical request, the selecting using the resource information, wherein the selected medical resource satisfies the one or more resource qualifications of the medical facility; and

determining a complexity factor for the electronic medical request using a patient age, the medical facility identifier, the body region, or combination thereof, and using the complexity factor in the selection of the medical resource.