One Region, One Big Hospital (OROBH)
Due to lack of healthcare personnel and high-competency medical staff, various systems were developed at the level of community and provincial hospitals to facilitate access to medical services provided at the CMUH for patients living in remote areas.
In 2007, CMUH formed a collaborative network between CMUH and community hospitals. The development of network was accomplished in the northern part of Thailand through collaborative effort of hospitals in both private and public sectors. As a result, the coronary heart disease network was the first to be established.
In 2010, CMUH expanded more collaborative networks to include stroke network, breast cancer network and palliative care network in order to provide high quality medical services for patients in the northern part of Thailand.
To assist community hospitals in managing emergency cases, a 24-hour hotline service and a Fast Track system were also implemented. Through this network, training courses to increase personnel’s knowledge and skills including pre-referral patient management guidelines were organized. However, patient mortality rate during referral was still high because the duration of hospital admission for these patients was long and patient’s information transfer including patient management were not of the same standard throughout.
In 2011, a significant initiative namely the “One Region, One Big Hospital” or “OROBH” was developed under the hospital’s medical director vision to create a seamless integrative working system from remote hospitals in rural areas to the CMUH, creating a unified virtual hospital through the integrative network. Medical consultations between hospitals would seem like a consultation between hospital's internal departments that would reduce working processes, time and any obstacles due to traveling distance for the patients.
CMUH has developed an E-discharge Summary program for transferring medical information back to the originating community hospitals in order to provide continuous patient care in accordance with CMUH’s guidelines. The success of the program led to a development of Logistic Medical Information or “LMI” to send medical information back to the community hospitals in order to notify the hospital of patient’s treatment, medication, diagnosis, management plan and other information necessary for patient care. The information was sent every day at midnight to community hospital’s mailbox via secured email messages to protect patient’s privacy.
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