TRACE at the Cleveland Clinic Regional Hospital Transfer Center

When the Cleveland Clinical opened its Regional Hospital Transfer Center in October 2008, TRACE was the technology they implemented to streamline, document and support its transfer process.

The all-inclusive transfer center assists the Cleveland Clinic's nine regional hospitals with transfers when they are experiencing capacity constraints or lack a required medical service to meet a patient's need.

By calling one number, facilities gain 24/7 access to an available bed at a Cleveland Clinic site, an on-call physician to accept the patient and a trained transfer specialist to coordinate the transfer.

The transfer center uses TRACE for paperless tracking of the entire process, from start to finish.

When a transfer is scheduled, the center uses FaxCert to capture the fax sent by the transferring facility that supplies the patient's demographic information. The center forwards this fax to the receiving site through FaxCert.

By storing these records in Tracker, the center can verify the patient's demographic and insurance information when needed.

The center also uses PixCert to capture an image of the patient's transfer summary sheet. This sheet contains information such as the accepting physician, bed assignment and transport company.

The center forwards the summary sheet through FaxCert to the sending and receiving sites, as well as the transport company. Transferring and receiving facilities within the Cleveland Clinic also use FaxCert to send and receive these documents.

All records are indexed by patient and available in Tracker for forwarding, resending and retrieval. A permanent record of the transfer process gives the center proof to resolve scenarios such as discrepancies over admission status (eg., inpatient vs. observation), patient acceptance or bed assignment.

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