Management of information in radiation oncology: An integrated system for scheduling, treatment, billing, and verification

An effective information system is an essential prerequisite to delivering quality patient care at competitive costs. From scheduling and billing to complex treatment machine control and verification, the quality of the information system strongly affects the efficiency and accuracy with which patient care is delivered. The standard paper-based information system used in many clinics suffers from inefficiencies and incompleteness in scheduling and billing, no centralized database and the inability to generate routine reports and communicate with other information systems. Many of these problems are resolved by the introduction of an electronic information system. The implementation, gains, and limitations of two electronic information systems are discussed. While limitations such as the lack of complete seamless integration of all information still exist, major improvements have been made in efficiency, accuracy, data integrity, and reporting and billing completeness.