With the significant impact on hospital finances and resources many organizations are asking how they can improve their clinicians’ delivery of care, without incurring huge operational or capital expenditures. One method to make no-cost improvements is to ensure the correct number of processes are running on each Millennium™ application node.
The normal metrics used to identify the performance of applications tend to evaluate how much CPU and memory is being used, for example. However, these metrics are not effective in tracking the performance of an application node’s throughput. CPU and Memory usage are effective metrics for tracking resource consumption and the overall scalability of the application node. The essential problem is that these metrics are designed to provide a high-level overview of the amount of work being done by the application node. They are not designed to track the throughput of an individual process nor set of processes on each application node.
The question that may be raised is “how do you appropriately measure the output of Millennium “service”? A service is a set of processes that work to accomplish the same set of tasks or requests. For example, there is a process named CPM Async Script which has multiple “instances” that are configured to run and are running. This is done to handle the amount of work being done by the processes. Tracking and instrumenting these processes would be a simple task. The complexity lies in the lack of tools to track this.
Softek Panther has the tools to track and measure these throughputs. Panther has a control that shows how many additional instances of a given process are needed to keep up with the current version of code, the current build of the applications, and the current clinical volumes. The name of this control is called SCP Recommendations.
Here is an example of the SCP Recommendations control:
By checking the box in the Selected column, the number of configured instances will be changed by the number in the Increase column. For example, the first row, Queue, CERN.EKS_ASYNCH_01, Entry ID 150, SCP Description Discern Expert Server (EKS_ASYNCH_01) currently has a configured instance count of 31 but it needs to have one more instance added to be configured and started to handle throughput better. If Panther has the privileges set up to make fixes, the SCP Recommendations control will apply the increase of instances across all application nodes in the domain. Panther will not start additional instances until the server is cycled by the end user.
Using the SCP Recommendations Control weekly and making the recommended changes will keep the Millennium system working with the highest clinical throughput that the application nodes can achieve. These recommendations are accomplished without adding hardware, taking new Millennium versions, or paying consultants to perform costly, time-consuming analyses.
Just increasing instances of application nodes can prove to be a very effective, inexpensive way to keep your clinicians happy with Millennium’s performance. Using the SCP Recommendations control can help ensure that your system is running effectively, even as workloads increase.
What does Softek® do?
Softek’s mission is to help hospital systems maximize their investment in Oracle Cerner Millennium®. We do this by providing innovative software solutions and consulting services that can achieve more together than either can alone.
At Softek, our team of innovators and software developers brings expertise beyond the ordinary to every client. Our experts are involved with Oracle Cerner Millennium® hospitals throughout the country, consulting clients so they can optimize system performance and revenue integrity.
Softek delivers a full suite of consulting services and software solutions to assess and optimize EMR system performance, including revenue cycle integrity and patient accounting.
Let’s talk about how you can get the most out of your Oracle Cerner Millennium® system.
