MEDITECH Customers Receive Award for "Bold" IT Projects

In recognition of their exemplary ability to take on risks to benefit their organizations, two of our customers, St. Joseph Health System (Orange, CA), and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center (Baltimore, MD), have received The CIO 100 award from CIO Magazine. The CIO 100 awards are given annually, and have a different focus each year. This year's award, "The Bold 100," was granted to only nine organizations whose primary business is health care—and MEDITECH is quite proud that two of those recipients are MEDITECH customers.

Our customer winners were specifically recognized for their bold leadership involving MEDITECH IT solutions. Bayview is being lauded for their successful and ambitious MEDITECH implementation, which is laying the groundwork for computerized physician order entry (CPOE). St. Joseph Health System is receiving this award in recognition for their cutting-edge Care ReDesign clinical transformation initiative to improve patient safety and quality of care.

According to Howard Messing, president and COO at MEDITECH, "We are extremely pleased to see these latest manifestations of our successful partnerships with these two outstanding organizations. Both are continuing to attract well-deserved national attention."

Johns Hopkins Bayview Replaces Best-of-Breed System
The 700-bed Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center embarked on the largest IT initiative in its history—a completely new strategy to replace its best-of-breed model with a single-vendor solution from MEDITECH. "Our IT strategic plan was built on the need to implement a comprehensive and innovative set of technology solutions to support our patient care initiatives, improve operational efficiency, and reduce costs," according to Deborah E. Prince, senior director of information services at Bayview.

Bayview rolled out an aggressive implementation strategy to meet its goals. "The financial, administrative and ancillary department applications were LIVE in July, 2003 along with Provider Order Entry and the electronic Medication Administration Record (eMAR) across all inpatient units and the ED LIVE in June, 2004. The Emergency Department and Ambulatory Surgery Unit were implemented over a 9-month timeline between October, 2004, and June, 2005," says Prince. "With a comprehensive set of financial, administrative, and clinical tools in place, Bayview now has the foundation to begin the deployment of CPOE to all outpatient areas, bar coding to the bedside, and individualized health maintenance records. We expect this project to begin in 2006."

An integrated solution, says Prince, makes real-time patient information available in all system applications and centralizes patient related data in a lifetime Electronic Medical Record.  She adds, "We implemented a complete CPOE system, which is being used by 100% of our attending staff, medical residents, medical students, Physician Assistants, and Nurse Practitioners, within all inpatient units, the Emergency Department, and Ambulatory Surgery. The Electronic Medication Administration Record is also being used on all inpatient units and the ED."

Bayview is already experiencing a return on its investment through significant savings in systems support and maintenance costs. Additional benefits include improved inter-departmental communications through electronic data communications and ordering, decreased time to complete Stat and Now medication orders and improved speed of orders completed electronically versus on paper.


St. Joseph Health System Implements "Care ReDesign" Initiative
St. Joseph Health System (SJHS), a 14-hospital network, is being recognized by CIO magazine for its strong leadership and success in implementing the health care organization's groundbreaking "Care ReDesign" initiative. The Care ReDesign initiative represents an exciting partnership between MEDITECH and SJHS to infuse state-of-the-art integrated software applications and infrastructure into its care settings.

SJHS has completed its first full implementation at its early adopter site, St. Jude Medical Center (Fullerton, CA). Software from the MEDITECH Advanced Clinical System suite now LIVE at St. Jude includes CPOE, on-line nursing clinical documentation, electronic medical records, and an electronic Medication Administration Record. In addition to the MEDITECH Advanced Clinical System, SJHS has also structured business process redesign to maximize the new technologies.

According to Benjamin R. Williams, senior vice president strategic innovation & CIO at SJHS, "The new care delivery system enables physicians and other members of the caregiving team to have real-time access to patient data, medical orders, and test results simultaneously. Automating these clinical processes and getting the information into the hands of clinicians has reduced the 'wait state' for patients, while improving both the quality and safety of patient care."

SJHS is at the forefront of using medical informatics and process redesign to revolutionize care delivery at community based health systems. Most of the advances seen previously in this area have been at more urban, academic medical centers.

The key difference of the community-based setting is that in most cases, physicians are independent contractors, and thus able to refer their patients elsewhere if they are dissatisfied with a new technology system. To mitigate this risk, the SJHS strategy centered on engaging physicians and caregivers from hospitals across the health system, encouraging them to collaborate on both the design and implementation of the new system.

MEDITECH was an active partner in this process, participating in design sessions and working to refine and enhance the software where possible based on input by medical and clinical staff. In addition to ensuring that the installed functionality would match workflow and enhance patient safety, the strategy also promoted a sense of ownership among the 2,700 caregivers.

Even though the system has been LIVE at St. Jude for only a short time, success measures are already showing a positive trend, and an independent survey placed its physicians in the top 5 percent nationwide for physician satisfaction relating to accessibility of patient information. This patient-centered clinical transformation is now being rolled out to the other 13 hospitals of SJHS.