Centre Hospitalier Angrignon

CGI leads two Montreal area hospitals into the future

“The innovative and strategic solution that CGI proposed for the management of our key administrative functions clearly demonstrated that they completely understood our needs. This solution offered the best quality-to- price ratio and is ideal for us in the long run.

François Lemoyne, Director of Finance and Information Technology, CHA

In Canada’s cost-conscious healthcare sector, hospitals – particularly those that are dependent on government funding – are looking for new ways to improve the efficiency of their operations and measure their performance in an attempt to maximize the investments in their core activities. For two Montreal-area hospitals, success is being achieved through a partnership with CGI that allows them to benefit from forward-looking, integrated IT solutions with exceptional flexibility and scalability.

The challenge
The hospital centre formerly known as the Centre hospitalier Angrignon was established through the merger of the LaSalle General Hospital and the Verdun Hospital Centre. These two hospitals were founded in 1932 to offer a range of healthcare services to a diverse demographic in southwest Montreal. In July of 2000, they "de-merged" to become autonomous institutions with a common central administration. Each of them had their own information systems that fully supported their operations, but offered very limited strategic data mining capabilities.

The management of these de-merged hospitals was faced with the challenge of acquiring integrated IT solutions that would help streamline their resources and permit them to fulfil their mission. In addition, these hospitals had to find a way to upgrade their information systems so that they could measure their performance and assess the cost associated with each episode of care. Meeting these significant challenges became a priority following the government of Quebec’s decision to adopt a performance-based funding formula for hospitals. Those that failed to measure their performance accurately ran the risk of losing increasingly vital added funding. On a different but equally important note, the CHA was not in a position to assign this complex computing task to its internal resources.

Through the standard competitive bidding process, CGI presented a unique business and healthcare vision for the hospitals that lead to a 10-year IT outsourcing contract with the CHA. François Lemoyne, Director of Finance and Information Technology for the CHA declared: “The innovative and strategic solution that CGI proposed for the management of our key administrative functions clearly demonstrated that they completely understood our needs. This solution offered the best quality-to-price ratio and is ideal for us in the long run.”

The strategy
Being aware that an in-house system would require constant upgrades, CGI rejected that option and proposed an audacious and exclusive model that was both scalable and affordable. Although this approach did not comply with the specifications set forth in the request for proposal, CGI strongly believed in the potential of this proposal. Through the recommended application service provider (ASP) model, the CHA would benefit from high-speed servers and the latest management applications without costly investments in hardware and software. It would also facilitate the three-step implementation of a state-of-the-art solution that would be fully integrated with the SAP Enterprise Portal and maximize the use of existing systems.

The project began in August 2000. To further develop the proposed solution, CGI first initiated a research phase that was funded through its Strategic Investment Program (SIP) and staged a pilot project to explore, among others, a Web solution for SAP.

As systems integrator, CGI created a network infrastructure and developed a Web-based interface to enable application access via the Internet. CGI provided end-to-end services to manage the evolution of the solution. Tight security measures including maintaining servers at a secure off-site location worked to increase privacy protection.

The ASP model, where many clients share the same infrastructure and applications, makes day-to-day operations easier because all maintenance, supervision and responsibility of the system rest with CGI. "We appreciate CGI’s comprehensive and integrated ASP model. As a result, we only have to deal with a limited number of suppliers to meet all of our IT needs,” explained Lemoyne.

The technology

• SAP Enterprise Portal Environment;
• SAP R/3 healthcare-related financial and administrative solutions;
• MediSolution: existing human resource management and payroll systems.

The results
Through the ASP model, the hospitals have gained significant financial and operational benefits as well as exceptional data mining capabilities that support major management and administrative decisions. For instance, CGI can extract an abundance of data from the existing CHA payroll system into SAP applications and leverage their advanced functionalities. In the past, management had to wait three weeks after any payroll period to obtain detailed reports. Now, this information is available three days prior to payroll distribution. This information is more detailed than ever, presenting the number of hours worked by each employee in every pay period. In addition, procurement leaders use this integrated data to maximize purchase savings through improved transaction grouping and management of promotional periods offered by suppliers. At the beginning, conventional wisdom postulated that all existing systems had to be replaced in order to obtain such outstanding results. Thanks to the ASP model implemented by CGI and the tight-knit collaboration between its members and the dynamic leaders at CHA, these results were achieved without resorting to drastic measures.

In conclusion, Lemoyne noted: "We're very happy with what CGI did and impressed with its knowledge of technology and implementation of healthcare applications. Now that we do not have to worry about managing our information systems, we can spend more time on our core obligation, i.e. providing healthcare services.”

Although the original contract focused only on administrative applications, its scope was expanded to incorporate medico-administrative applications such as the management of patient admissions, transfers and discharges.