Fisher-Titus, Magruder To Be Nearly Paperless In 10 Months With Cerner Technology

February 2, 2010 (FinancialWire) Fisher-Titus Medical Center and Magruder Hospital are expected to be among the first two all-digital, smart hospitals in the nation after implementing Cerner (NASDAQ: CERN) healthcare technology systems throughout both organizations in just 10 months.

Cerner, Fisher-Titus and Magruder define a smart hospital, which is an expansion of Cerners Smart Room, as a fully-automated hospital that incorporates the patient experience into the providers workflow and proactively pushes relevant information to and from the electronic health record to the patient and provider. This project will launch both organizations to the top five percent of automated hospitals in the nation and creates the infrastructure that could eventually build a connected health network.

Among the technology being deployed, including more than 35 Cerner Millennium solutions, each hospital will transform patient rooms into private Cerner Smart Rooms. The Cerner Smart Room incorporates key elements of the patient and clinician experience to automate workflows and processes and coordinate care among providers. Each room is built with the patient experience as the primary focus and is equipped with an interactive TV the patient can use to access the Internet, view their EHR, access relevant health education resources, track daily goals and get to know their care team. This automation also improves patient safety by creating a Single Source of Truth for patient health information.

Fisher-Titus and Magruder are independent community hospitals that for 11 years have partnered to implement technology that enhances the patient care experience. The organizations made the decision to collaborate on the automation of their hospitals to develop best practices for technology deployment and begin to coordinate care in the region. Both organizations are utilizing Cerners MethodM implementation service, which leverages best practices for installing the system, enabling more than 35 solutions to go-live in just 10 months.

In addition to the Cerner Smart Rooms, Fisher-Titus and Magruder are automating each department within their hospitals, including surgery, pharmacy, laboratory, emergency department and the ICU. The implementations are scheduled to be complete this spring.

There are four major components of the Cerner Smart Room:

* A clinical dashboard gives caregivers a summary view of all relevant health information instead of having to click between different tabs in the medical record;

* The Room Wizard uses Real Time Location Service technology to alert the patient when clinicians or hospital staff enters the room and provides detailed information, including a biography and photo. Also located outside the room, the Room Wizard gives relevant information to providers such as allergies or alerts if the patient is a fall risk;

* Integrated devices such as IV pumps and blood pressure monitors, feed data directly into the EHR, eliminating transcribing errors and updating the EHR in real-time;

* The interactive patient station allows patients and their families to actively participate in the care process; including access to clinical team member bios, a schedule for the day and the ability to update and track goals, surf the Internet and order movies.

The automation of these two smart hospitals will create the infrastructure that could allow Fisher-Titus and Magruder to connect and securely share information through a health information network. Through this network, consumers could easily access their health record anywhere, at any time.

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