Patient Safety & Care Improve For Centra Through Financial & Clinical Process Connectivity

Patient Safety & Care Improve For Centra Through Financial & Clinical Process Connectivity

Centra was created more than 20 years ago by the merger of two acute-care hospitals, Lynchburg General and Virginia Baptist, serving the greater Lynchburg area in central Virginia. In 2006, Southside Community Hospital in Farmville joined Centra as an affiliate. Today Centra serves 500,000 people in a large geographic service area with a mission of "Excellent Care... Every Time."

A vision of improving patient safety, quality care, and the overall health of our population was embarked on by Centra nearly a decade ago.Along the way, we partnered with McKesson on a $30 million transformational project to design, build, test and implement 24 new applications to integrate financial and clinical processes.

In October 2005, our two acute-care Lynchburg-based hospitals were live on all applications. This effort involved retraining 4,500 users, including 1,100 nurses. It began paying dividends immediately:

Moving to bar-code medication administration reduced late medication delivery by 80%.

In the ED, we've seen a 75% improvement in radiology turnaround time.

Requiring physicians to sign charts electronically improved chart deficiencies by 55%.

Since October 2008, Centra has focused on achieving full implementation of electronic nursing documentation. At 92%, we're almost there. We saved CPOE for this later phase, knowing it would be a huge undertaking. You don't want to just automate existing order sets; you first want to improve them.

In addition, authorized physicians can all see inpatient records via the hospital portal.

Strong physician alignment has opened doors to explore ground-breaking care delivery models. For example, Centra is conducting a pilot study with the American College of Cardiology to build a comprehensive cardiac clinical repository that automatically links to the National Cardiovascular Data Registry so physicians receive real-time, evidence-based guidelines. This connectivity will enable automated quality reporting and benchmarking adherence to ACC/American Hospital Association clinical practice guidelines.

We know this connectivity will lead to better care, efficiency, quality and patient safety(http://www.mckesson.com/en_us/McKesson.com/For+Healthcare+Providers/Hospitals/Patient+and+Medication+Safety/Patient+and+Medication+Safety.html) that's affordable and makes a lasting impact on future generations.

For a complete version of this article, visit McKesson(http://www.strategiestoperform.com/volume3_issue5/volume3_issue5_b_leveraging.html) online.

by: George Dawson

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