Healthcare IT News - October 2008 - (Page 29)

www.HealthcareITNews.com hoSpItalS & IdNs October 2008 ■ Healthcare IT News 29 It helps California hospital spot high-risk patients By BerNIe MoNegaIN, Editor – Mercy Merced Medical Center, part of the Catholic Healthcare West system, is putting information technology to work in identifying high-risk patients. Mercy Merced tapped Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Thomson Reuters for its Clinical Xpert CareFocus software, an extension of the Clinical Xpert Navigator product that gives clinicians access to clinical data on their MERCED, CA mobile devices and smartphones. CareFocus is designed to allow clinicians to build clinical profiles to identify high-risk patients from the hospital census based on their medications, lab results, vital signs, diagnoses, observations, active orders and demographics. By identifying at-risk patients early, clinicians say, hospitals can significantly improve clinical outcomes - reducing mortality, length of stay and potential “the ability to identify the ability to identify an earlycosts from treatan early-stage sepsis stage sepsis ing complications. patient can have a big patient based on “The capability subtle clinical that CareFocus impact on the changes can have brings to the hostimeliness of medical a big impact on pital is extremely intervention. the timeliness of valuable,” said medical interRobert Streeter, – Robert Streeter, MD vention - and on MD, chief medical officer for Mercy Merced the end results.” Thomson Reuters provides conMedical Center.” As an example, sulting services to assist clinicians with building and deploying clinical profiles. Typical sets include – but are not limited to - profiles for identifying patients with acute myocardial infarction (with and without aspirin), influenza, C-difficile toxins, urinary tract infections, MRSA infection and diabetes management. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: MerCy 1008 l A DoD demo of its EHR system at HIMSS07. HeaT Continued from page 1 in varied sharing capabilities. Information is still being captured in paper records at many DOD medical facilities, and not all electronic health information is being shared, GAO officials said. The VA has more than half a million patients, all of whom see physicians inside and outside the VA system. VA officials have said they consider interoperability of health records a top priority to giving the veterans seamless quality care. At a Sept. 23 meeting of the American Health Information Community, VA Secretary James Peake said the VA is dedicated to helping the federally led effort to push interoperability. “We clearly have a dog in this fight,” he said, “and we are looking forward to the strength of our agencies behind us.” Peake praised AHIC’s first interoperability demonstration, held at meeting, saying interoperability is “absolutely the right way to go.” He predicted that the “cottage industry nature of medicine will change” because of it. Charles Campbell, chief information officer for the Department of Defense Military Health System, reassured a Senate oversight panel on Sept. 24 that progress is being made. “The initial movement toward interoperability was a struggle,” he told the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. The departments are gaining momentum, he said, and plan to be fully interoperable by next September. “The journey has been long and arduous and will not end when we achieve interoperability,” Campbell said. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: dod 1008 Easy. Ergonomic. Economic. Carstens redesigned WALKaroo III™ now features an easy-lift cylinder with hand lever control for smooth adjustment to sitting or standing positions. WALKaroo III also features: Options: For more information www.carstensEHR.com 1.800.621.5051. l Do you think the Va and DoD should make faster progress? send your thoughts to senior editor Diana Manos at diana. manos@medtechpublishing.com. © Copyright 2008 Carstens e l Connect: CarSteNS 1008 Your Partner in the Evolution of Charting http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10068 http://www.carstensEHR.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10039 http://www.carstensEHR.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=10094

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Healthcare IT News - October 2008 Contents Seattle's Slate Board 2.0 MGMA Newsmaker IT Battles Infection Beyond Adoption Excellence in Maine Carrot and Stick HP Layoffs Mobile Workstations Automating Offices

Healthcare IT News - October 2008

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