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Marshfield Clinic Chooses Krames On-Demand to Standardize Patient Education at the Point of Care Across Its System

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 August 2007, 12:21 CDT

Marshfield Clinic, one of the nation's largest not-for-profit multispecialty medical group practices, has 730 physicians practicing in northern, western and central Wisconsin. Marshfield Clinic's mission is to serve patients through accessible, high quality health care, research and education. With over two million patient encounters annually at more than 40 sites, Marshfield Clinic selected Krames Patient Education to provide standardized, quality education at the point of care.

"Historically, there has been a degree of decentralization across the Clinic and this raises challenges in supporting our quality brand experience," explained Joseph Kilsdonk, administrator, Marshfield Clinic Division of Education. "We have an electronic medical record (EMR) used across the Clinic system and were looking for an education solution to support our standardization of care."

Krames On-Demand (KOD) provides a fit for Marshfield Clinic because both the Clinic's EMR and KOD are CCOW (Clinical Context Object Workgroup)-enabled, allowing the two applications to sync data at the point of care to better streamline workflow.

Marshfield wanted standardization and quality. "The content was viewed very positively by the Clinic's Education Committee and our clinicians," added Edna DeVries, M.D., a Clinic medical director and practicing pediatrician. "Readability for patients and use of graphics rated very high with us."

Kilsdonk added: "Krames also brought diversity. All content also is in Spanish and the wide range of Hmong and other languages is also important to us."

As Marshfield Clinic continues to transition to a paperless environment, the organization has appreciated Krames, with whom the Clinic has had a longstanding relationship.

"Marshfield Clinic has been a key Krames customer for a number of years," explained Jean Neiner, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Krames. "We knew that Krames could help Marshfield deal with the issues surrounding change management by providing an education solution providers were already familiar with from our print products." Mr. Kilsdonk and Dr. DeVries noted that Krames has consistently provided quality customer service to medical education and Information Systems staff.

As part of their Krames On-Demand implementation, Marshfield will also be deploying the Krames Online Patient Education database on the Clinic's website. Krames Online will provide website visitors access to the same education they would receive as a patient in one of the Clinic's locations. The Krames Online website implementation supports their objective of providing consistent quality education across all patient touch points.

About Marshfield Clinic

Marshfield Clinic, founded by six physicians in 1916 in Marshfield, Wisconsin, is the largest private group medical practice in Wisconsin and one of the largest in the United States. Marshfield Clinic has more than 730 physicians representing 86 medical specialties at more than 40 locations in Wisconsin. The Clinic has over two million patient encounters annually with patients from every state in the nation, as well as over 25 foreign nations.

About Krames On-Demand

Krames On-Demand is an award-winning, print-on-demand patient education solution designed for hospitals and health systems. KOD allows nurses, doctors and educators to instantly select and personalize over 5,000 single topic HealthSheets™ for each patient and print them at the point of care. The HealthSheets™ are available in English and Spanish in 37 medical specialty areas. KOD modules available include RecordWriter™ (for documenting patient education encounters and facilitating EMR integration), Translations (content is available in 10 languages), Krames Information Therapy™ (a secure e-messaging solution), Custom Content Builder (an editing tool allowing users to customize content delivered through the system), Krames Online™ (patient-friendly content similar to KOD designed for website portals), and Krames Kiosk (a touch screen application designed to provide access to Krames patient education at self-service terminals).

About Krames

Founded in 1974, Krames (a division of MediMedia) is the market leader in patient education, wellness, and safety materials, producing over 1,400 titles in more than 36 specialty areas. Krames' materials are used by over 80 percent of American hospitals and more than 1,000 health plans and employer groups, over 300,000 physicians and nurses in hospitals and private practices, and many of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. Print and electronic content/materials are created to help individuals understand and take control of their health choices and improve the quality of their lives. For more information, please visit www.krames.com.

About MediMedia

Headquartered in Chatham, NJ, with 1,400 employees in offices throughout the U.S., MediMedia is a publishing and information company which educates physicians and patients about drugs, diseases, therapies, health, safety and healthy lifestyles and is managed through two distinct business segments: the Patient Education Group and the Pharmaceutical Group. The Patient Education Group provides patient education content sponsored by the full set of healthcare stakeholders, including employers, hospitals, health plans, physicians, patients and pharmaceutical companies. Customers purchase patient education products and services from MediMedia because these products and services help them lower healthcare costs. The Pharmaceutical Group provides content and application-based marketing solutions for pharmaceutical companies, spanning their entire marketing continuum during a drug's lifecycle, which are targeted to physicians, payers and patients. Customers purchase our pharmaceutical products and services because these products and services help them drive incremental drug prescriptions.

MediMedia is a Vestar Capital Partners portfolio company.

Source: Business Wire

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