Switching from paper to online forms has helped the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center increase applications from potential kidney donors to its program by 40 percent.
John Roberts, M.D., chief of the UCSF Transplant Service, said a web-based solution by San Francisco-based MedSleuth, Inc. has helped the organization streamline and automate its donor evaluation process.
UCSF also uses the web-based system called Breeze, both for pre-operative evaluations and kidney transplant procedures. Both applications use algorithms to generate a customized questionnaire to elicit a patient's medical history.
Previously, UCSF used generic paper-based forms and face-to-face meetings between the patient and physician or nurse practitioner--a process that was inconvenient for the patient and expensive, Roberts said in a Healthcare Informatics article.
He added that the system could also help collect information about potential recipients and could be modified for a liver transplant program.
To learn more:
- read the Healthcare Informatics article