NASHVILLE, TN – January 28, 2009 – Informatics Corporation of America (ICA; www.icainformatics.com), providing clinicians with a single technology solution for accessing, evaluating and acting upon patient information across disparate systems, today announced the deployment of the ICA solution at Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, to assist their physicians in providing community-wide care. The 379-bed hospital is part of the Catholic Healthcare Partners network.
The hospital contracted with ICA on July 1, 2008 to aggregate data from a multitude of in-place health care information systems and provide a tool allowing physicians to monitor, assess and treat patients across the various treatment settings in and around the Paducah area. The solution collects data from the hospital’s core information system, as well as laboratory, radiology, quality-assurance, ambulatory electronic medical records and other supporting clinical systems, yielding a comprehensive longitudinal patient record. A pilot launch of the solution was deployed in mid-December 2008 with an affiliated primary-care physician office. Less than six months from contract signing, implementation of the ICA solution is allowing providers to remotely view admission status, diagnostic results, clinical reports and radiological images of their patients in the hospital. After several weeks of successful testing and use of the system, the hospital is now embarking on an aggressive rollout to its other affiliated physicians in the community.
Craig M. Slater, M.D., MBA, Regional Chief Medical Officer of Mercy Health Partners – Kentucky and Chief Medical Officer of Lourdes Hospital, praised the pilot launch, saying, "The system’s intuitive user interface and physician- accommodating workflow made its use a natural extension of practicing medicine. Training was quick and easy, and pilot participants were able to continue seeing a full patient load during the implementation process."
"The ICA team worked closely with our information technology, clinical and executive staff, as well as our affiliated physicians, to bring our vision to fruition in a very short period of time," said Steven Grinnell, Regional CEO, Mercy Health Partners – Kentucky and President and CEO of Lourdes Hospital. "As we continue our rollout of the application and add to its functionality, we look forward to the benefits it will bring to the community, the physicians and our hospital. I anticipate this excellent tool will help us improve our efficiency in delivering care, the quality of care delivered and the satisfaction of our patients, physicians and staff."
The ultimate goal of the rollout is to provide a secure clinical portal allowing Lourdes’ physicians to view patient status from the multitude of clinical settings in which they operate. Previously, inpatient clinical staff updated physicians on patient status by manually assembling vital patient information onto a paper flow sheet for their review, relaying urgent changes in patient status by telephone or transmitting information by fax. ICA’s solution extracts information which is updated in real time from the source systems and displays it on electronic flow sheets available to physicians anywhere they have Internet connectivity. Introduction of this technology will reduce the administrative burden on inpatient clinical staff, eliminate possible transposition errors and provide the latest results to physicians instantaneously. In addition to inpatient flow sheets, templated forms and notes and a secure clinical messaging capability will be deployed throughout 2009.
About Lourdes Hospital
Lourdes Hospital is sponsored by Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP), one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in the nation. Located in Paducah, Kentucky, it serves as a regional referral center for a wide geographic area, including more than a dozen counties in western Kentucky, southern Illinois, southeast Missouri, and northwest Tennessee. Lourdes offers an extensive array of medical specialties and technologies typically found in much larger urban settings.
About Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) was created with nationally renowned Vanderbilt Medical Center to take innovative technology developed by Vanderbilt physicians to the broader health care market. Today ICA is unmatched in its ability to deliver a cost-effective, proven solution that leverages complete data across clinical settings to aid decision-making and improve patient outcomes. Visit www.icainformatics.com
