Decision Support

Last week, Calvary Mater Newcastle Hospital in New South Wales (NSW), Australia became the 17th Intensive Care Unit (ICU) across the state to replace paper charting with Electronic Record for Intensive Care (eRIC), which digitally integrates patient data from bedside monitors, ventilators and other specialised equipment every minute. With this latest go live, more than a third of NSW’s 44 ICU hospitals are onboard the eRIC clinical information system. The electronic Record for Intensive Care (eRIC) is an electronic clinical information system within an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) that integrates patient data every minute from multiple systems, to improve patient safety and provide better clinical decision-making. “eRIC will cut manual documentation work, which is very time consuming,” said Kelly Duff, Clinical Nurse Educator and Change Manager at Calvary Mater. “With eRIC, we expect that documentation and compliance will improve, resulting in fewer mistakes relating to these.” Webinar: Leveraging Cloud to Revolutionize Health IT and Transform Your EMR System Calvary Mater Newcastle is the major cancer care centre for the Hunter New England Local Health District, delivering more than 320,000 occasions of outpatient services and in excess of 16,000 inpatient treatments per year. In October 2016, Port Macquarie Base Hospital (PMBH) was selected as the first ICU in NSW to deploy eRIC. Subsequently, there were eight hospital deployments of eRIC in 2017 and this year, there were nine hospital deployments, including the latest deployment by Calvary Mater Newcastle Hospital. Including Calvary Mater’s ICU, 345 beds in 17 health facilities across nine Local Health Districts (LHDs) have been enabled with eRIC as part of the ongoing digital transformation of NSW Health. Deployments of eRIC will continue in 2019, starting with Gosford Hospital and Wyong Hospital in Central Coast LHD. eRIC will also be introduced next year in the ICUs of St Vincent’s Private Hospital within South Eastern Sydney LHD, Broken Hill Base Hospital in Far West LHD and Nepean Hospital in Nepean Blue Mountains LHD.

During December, we’ll interview thought leaders and experts to determine how data is redesigning the roles CEOs, CFOs, COOs and other execs play and take a business-first perspective on tactics such as cloud computing, telehealth and patient experience

The company also says it's working with groups such as the American College of Radiology to develop API standards to better integrate AI into radiology workflows, EHRs and PACS.  

The time it takes to take a test has been reduced from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, freeing up technicians to do other clinical work.

The health system has used evidence-based best practices in clinical decision support tools to reduce non-emergent blood transfusions.

This case study shows how the New York hospital integrated the technology with its EHR, sending vital signs to clinicians directly and avoiding cumbersome manual processes.

Hospitals and medical groups with limited security resources still have leadership options in managed care providers and virtual CISOs.

Pivot Labs, a collaboration with tech services company Persistent Systems, will also seek innovative ways to boost clinical outcomes and manage costs.

CarePort customers can now receive automated medical reviews sent straight to their Care Management workflow, thereby reducing administrative burden.

This case study shows how clinicians reduced the number of orders for one specific test from roughly 90 per month to five – helping with antimicrobial stewardship along the way.