St. Barnabas Hospital will roll out a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system as a foundation to establishing an electronic health record in its acute care environments.
St. Barnabas is the flagship of an expanding healthcare network located in the Bronx, providing comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services. Outpatient services include a large network of primary care sites and community mental health centers located throughout the borough.
The hospital will use technology developed by Atlanta-based Eclipsys to build on what hospital executives call a highly successful use of Eclipsys' clinical technology at all three of its ambulatory care centers.
The project is part of an effort to align with the requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provides incentives to healthcare providers for achieving "meaningful use" of EHR technology by 2011.
St. Barnabas will employ Eclipsys' "speed to value" implementation approach to accelerate the EHR activation to help meet ARRA timeline requirements and maximize stimulus payment opportunities. Eclipsys' repeatable implementation methodology leverages the company's client base to provide more than 1,000 suggested design decisions to help reduce deployment cycle time and enable clients to focus on value-added activities during the implementation.
"Our strategic imperative is to take advantage of enabling technology to help our clinical staff to improve care quality and efficiency, especially given our high patient volume," said Noah Caldwell, the hospital's chief information officer. "Eclipsys' CPOE solution promises to help improve both the speed and accuracy of physician orders within our hospital, and we believe it is fundamental to the achievement of 'meaningful use' of EHRs, which will deliver the dual benefit of ARRA funding and improved care coordination and clinical decision support across our care environments."
St. Barnabas has achieved full physician adoption of Eclipsys' Sunrise Ambulatory Care solution in its ambulatory care centers, which see nearly 400,000 patient visits annually. In combination with other components of the company's integrated suite of clinical solutions, the deployment of Eclipsys' CPOE solution, Sunrise Acute Care, will support St. Barnabas in establishing an enterprise-wide EHR that will encompass the emergency department and hospital pharmacy for improved medication management workflows.
"We are pleased that St. Barnabas recognizes Eclipsys' proven ability to help clients achieve implementation results rapidly, along with the deep levels of adoption which we expect will qualify them for ARRA funding," said Jay Deady, Eclipsys' executive vice president of client solutions.
