Working collaboratively, nurses and IT staff at 251-bed Methodist Willowbrook have created an electronic tool within the Houston-based hospital’s electronic medical record that has enabled it to achieve a rare zero percent infection rate in ventilator associated pneumonias, central line blood stream infections, and urinary catheter infections over a period of 14 consecutive months.
Since going live with the CPOE portion of its OpenVista implementation only a few weeks ago, Brooklyn, NY-based Lutheran Medical Center (LMC) has seen a 93 percent adoption rate among its physicians.
Claudia Caine, the hospital’s chief operating officer, attributes the institution’s success rate in part to…
When Michigan Health Connect (MHC) was established, its founding members shared a common vision for the handling of patient healthcare information. They agreed to collaborate and not compete when it came to clinical data.
“The CIOs in this region said, ‘let’s agree that we are not going to make healthcare information one of the things we compete on,’” says Bill Lewkowski, CIO for the Wyoming, MI-based Metro Health. “That was one of our ground rules when we started working together.”
When Denver Health first implemented Lean practices in 2005, CIO Gregg Veltri admits his department didn’t immediately jump on board. Despite participating in Lean training programs and contributing to various Lean events, the health system was three years into the process before IT initiated its first Lean project.
“IT was a late adopter because we didn’t understand how to use the tools in a technology environment,” explains Veltri. “Lean has this whole structure around rapid improvement events, which are weeklong events with eight to 10 people in different areas trying to change a process. In theory you are suppose to implement the new process at the end of the week. What we struggled with was that in IT, you can’t implement in a week.”
With the opening of a new facility, leaders at Westbury Hospital had the opportunity to implement an EHR system in record time. Hospital leaders expect to be ready to take advantage of Meaningful Use incentives in the first quarter of 2011.
Dale Potter, senior vice president and chief information officer of Ottawa Hospital, asks three questions before investing in new technology. First, will it provide better quality and safer patient care? Second, will it help hospital care providers do their jobs better? And finally, will it improve the patient experience?
When weighing the decision to invest in iPads for the Ontario, Canada-based hospital’s care providers, the answer to all three questions was a resounding “yes.”
Like many health systems its size, HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, MN once faced difficulties managing patient flow. The four-hospital organization had adequate capacity, yet patients were regularly diverted to facilities outside the health system. In addition, emergency department wait times were excessive and patient and physician satisfaction was low.
“We were turning away patients at one hospital within our health system while other hospitals nearby in the same market had capacity and were well-positioned to care for the patients,” explains Mac McClurkan, HealthEast’s vice president and CIO.