Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services’ First HHS IT Grant
Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services (JHHS), the parent company of a regional healthcare network that includes 60 facilities, will install Picis’ Ibex PulseCheck emergency department information system in four rural hospitals in Indiana and Kentucky. A federal grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for the development of health information technology has made this enhancement possible. This is one of the first grants awarded to a healthcare system by the Department of Health & Human Services and is the first federal IT grant to JHHS.
Ibex PulseCheck has been live in the main hospital campus emergency department and in the world-renown Hand Care Center since August 2003, as well as in Jewish Hospital Medical Center East since January 2003, all in Louisville. Hospitals benefiting from the AHRQ grant (UC1 HS14897) include Clark Memorial Hospital in Jeffersonville, Ind., Taylor Regional Hospital in Campbellsville, Ky., and Scott Memorial Hospital in Scottsburg, Ind. These hospitals represent more than 70,000 emergency department patient visits per year. Another rural hospital will be added, as well as three physician groups.
"The federal government is picking up about 40 percent of the total cost with the partner hospitals picking up the balance," says David Pecoraro, vice president and chief information officer, JHHS. "By expanding the network of automated emergency departments, medical information can be easily transferred when a patient is sent from one of the outlying hospitals to Jewish Hospital. Also, with the charge by documentation feature, hospitals will see a strong return on their investment while enhancing quality patient care with the right information at the right time," Pecoraro says.
"The emergency department is the front door to the hospital and can account for 50 percent of inpatient admissions," Pecoraro adds. "One way to improve patient safety and quality of care and contain costs is to track and document ED patient treatment in a complete electronic medical record that ensures comprehensive patient evaluation and continuity of care."
The four specific goals of this project are to implement Ibex PulseCheck and train users at four hospitals and three physician groups, evaluate the reduction in medical errors and waiting time in the EDs, evaluate the reduction in costs through improved diagnostic coding, billing and fewer repeat tests, and evaluate patient and physician satisfaction.
All three hospitals will implement Ibex PulseCheck’s patient tracking and reporting, which includes an interface with the hospitals’ ADT systems, alphanumeric paging, charge capture, email and faxing functions and discharge instructions. Also included are nursing and physician documentation, laboratory and radiology order entry and order status interfaces, an interface to the hospitals’ billing system and an outbound transcription interface to the hospitals’ clinical data repository.
"We are pleased Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services has tapped into the $139 million made available by the federal government through grants and contracts over the next five years," says Mark D. Crockett, M.D., F.A.C.E.P., president of the Picis Emergency Care Division. "Creative application of the grant money toward automating the emergency departments of rural hospitals will result in better information to caregivers, resulting in better care for patients who visit Clark Memorial, Scott Memorial and Taylor Regional Hospitals."
About Ibex PulseCheck
Picis provides Ibex PulseCheck, a complete emergency department information system, which includes a patient tracking system from triage to disposition, with easy-to-complete integration with other hospital information systems; Ibex PulseCheck’s nursing and physician documentation modules provide an electronic medical record with instant access to charts. Ibex PulseCheck users have documented millions of dollars of additional charges captured with Ibex PulseCheck’s charge management features, as well as reduced average patient wait time and length of stay. The risk management module provides real-time risk management prompting and supports physicians and nurses throughout the documentation process.
About Picis
Picis delivers proven best-in-cluster solutions for high-acuity care areas — the emergency department, the operating room and the intensive care unit. In July 2004, Picis merged with Ibex, the leading provider of emergency department systems. The combined entity’s corporate headquarters are located in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Picis’ systems are installed in more than 900 medical centers and IDNs worldwide, automating more surgical procedures, emergency visits and intensive care stays than any other system in the world. Clients include HCA; Health Management Associates, Inc.; the Mayo Clinic; MedStar Health; the Methodist Hospital in Houston; Mt. Sinai Medical Center; the National Health Service of the United Kingdom; NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System; Rush University Medical Center; Stanford University Medical Center; Sutter Health; and the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. IPicis was named one of the top 100 healthcare IT companies, by revenue, in the Healthcare Informatics report. Picis maintains partnerships with IDX Systems Corporation (NASDAQ: IDXC) and Lawson Software (NASDAQ: LWSN). More information is available at www.picis.com.
About JHHS
Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services (JHHS) is the parent company of a regional health care network that includes 60 health care facilities in Kentucky and southern Indiana and more than 1,200 patient beds. JHHS provides a complete array of health care services including: hospitals, emergency air ambulance, assisted living, home health care, outpatient care, nursing home care, occupational health and rehab medicine. The organization employs more than 7,200 people. U.S. News & World Report has recognized Jewish Hospital as one of its 50 Best Hospitals in the areas of orthopaedic and heart and heart surgery care. Jewish Hospital is the only one in the region included in the 2005 list of the 50 Best Hospitals. Jewish Hospital has for the second time made the list of the 100 most wired hospitals according to Hospital and Health Networks magazine. More information is available at www.jhhs.org.