Holy Cross Hospital

Holy Cross Hospital is a faith-based, community teaching hospital. It is a member of Trinity Health of Novi, Michigan, the nation’s third largest Catholic healthcare system. Over 1,400 leading specialists and general practitioners are affiliated with Holy Cross Hospital.

The Holy Cross Stroke Care Management Program is responsible for organizing care of patients who have suffered a stroke.

Holy Cross Hospital was setting up The Stroke Care Management Program and needed a way to facilitate collaboration among its neurologists, radiologist, and staff, including professionals at remote locations and academic affiliates.

“Many hospitals are trying to establish stroke care programs, and face the same issues around communication and decision-support. Setting up new clinical care programs is often hampered by insufficient communications infrastructure,” Dr. Andrew Barbash, who heads up the Holy Cross program, said. So, Dr. Barbash went looking for an effective communications infrastructure that could be set up quickly, at a low cost, with no long term budget commitments.

WebEx WebOffice offered Dr. Barbash and his team a practical set of tools in a consolidated place to manage core communications and a knowledge repository for documents, images and files. WebOffice was so affordable, that no budget approval was required by hospital management.

“WebOffice allows us to put guidelines, protocols and care pathways up on a private website and let people sign up, access them and conduct group forums,” Dr. Barbash said.

"We were able to demonstrate how an instant WebEx Meeting could be setup from the ER, Medical Floor, or ICU so that an ‘in house’ clinician can collaborate with a clinician remotely to review MRI pictures of blood vessels in a patient’s brain."

- Dr. Andrew Barbash, The Stroke Care Management Program at Holy Cross Hospital

“As a neurologist and head of a stroke care unit for a community hospital, I work collaboratively across multiple healthcare organizations. WebOffice can be applied to many different healthcare applications to facilitate more effective collaboration,” Dr. Barbash said.

“Many think it would cost $100,000 to put this infrastructure in place and are shocked to realize how affordable and simple it is to set up and use. I cannot say enough about the value of WebEx WebOffice. It demonstrates the ease with which a solid collaboration infrastructure can be leveraged with no capital investment or complex decision making.”

With the WebOffice Document Manager, the Stroke Care Management staff can share articles, edit and update files, and set permissions for access. “WebOffice is so useful. It’s intuitive, clean, fast and reliable,” Dr. Barbash said.

WebEx Meetings allows the group to share medical imaging, such as X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, with colleagues within the hospital and with experts located at other facilities, such as research and academic institutions.

“We were able to demonstrate how an instant WebEx Meeting could be setup from the ER, Medical Floor, or ICU so that an ‘in house’ clinician can collaborate with a clinician remotely to review MRI pictures of blood vessels in a patient’s brain.”

The group uses many other WebOffice tools. “The Database Manager’s functionality for knowledge management is huge,” Dr. Barbash said. “This week, we created a database in about an hour and a half. Now, when we get a phone call from the ER, we can easily log the patient into this database with a note to ourselves, a report of the CT scan, etc. Others on the team can log in and see the pending consultations, read relevant details, and get up to speed.”

The group uses: Web Office’s Discussions Forum to post discussions; the WebOffice Announcements to introduce new members and for ‘Tips of the Day;’ the Online Calendar with outbound event reminders to schedule meetings; and the Task Manager to track and manage tasks.

“WebOffice allows members of a specific disease program that crosses two or more organizations to work collaboratively, and it can get them started well in advance of signing lots of documents and legal agreements,” Dr. Barbash said.

“At Holy Cross Hospital, we see great potential for collaboration with nearby academic stroke centers to facilitate decision support, share perspectives on complex scenarios, and facilitate the identification of candidates for clinical trials,” Dr. Barbash said.