Leading Hospitals Turn to PatientKeeper to Improve Safety and Efficiency of Physician Hand-Off Process

VCU Medical Center, CHRISTUS Health, and Mercy Medical Center Implementing PatientKeeper Sign-Out

BOSTON, Mass., February 26, 2009 –PatientKeeper®, Inc., the leading developer of physician information systems, announced today the implementation of PatientKeeper Sign-OutTM at its customer sites. Leading healthcare facilities, including: Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (VCU); Mercy Medical Center of Cedar Rapids, IA; and Dallas-based CHRISTUS Health, which serves communities in more than 60 cities in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Georgia, New Mexico, Utah and Mexico, are among the organizations implementing PatientKeeper Sign-Out. 

PatientKeeper Sign-Out improves communication between physicians at the transition of care to streamline patient handoff and sign-out and to simplify discharge planning, and provides a standard process as specified by requirement 2E of the Joint Commission 2008 National Patient Safety Goals. Hospital organizations are increasingly turning to PatientKeeper for a formal mechanism to manage the handoff process so covering physicians know, at a glance, tasks that need to be done and how to prioritize patient needs.

“The safety of our patients is paramount to everything we do as an organization,” said Alistair Erskine, VCU chief medical information officer. “Our implementation of Sign-Out is helping us to coordinate smooth communication about patient status between shifts, adding simplicity to our care management processes that will positively impact patient care.”

When multiple providers share the care of patients over the course of several shifts, communicating patient information, care instructions and other details can be a challenge. A study published in the October Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety shed light on the fact that "handoffs" can contribute to preventable injuries not resulting from a patient's underlying medical condition. Based on a 2006 survey of 161 medical or surgical residents at Massachusetts General Hospital, the study showed that the majority of participants had reported at least one incident of handoff-related patient harm during their month-long inpatient rotations.

“With the PatientKeeper Sign-Out application we are providing our practicing physicians with a way to further help automate their patient care process,” said Jeff Cash, CIO of Mercy Medical Center. “Since all our employed and affiliated physicians already use PatientKeeper to access patient information and sign patient charts, the addition of the Sign-Out application will further enable physicians to enhance the patient care process without needing to learn how to access and use yet another software application.”

Physicians use PatientKeeper Sign-Out to quickly log tasks and enter patient care details, problems and other information that will be needed by covering physicians when handing off patient care to the next covering physician. Patient information is automatically populated and physicians are able to create additional fields specific to their practice. At the start of their shift, covering physicians have a concise high-level summary of critical patient information. They can quickly review the status of all of their patients, allowing them to prioritize their time to ensure that urgent patient needs are addressed first.

“The recent exposure regarding the dangers associated with patient handoffs points to the need for automating this process,” said Paul Brient, chief executive officer of PatientKeeper. “Physicians can avoid problems associated with incomplete handoff with the right tools to support them.”

Sign-Out is an application within the PatientKeeper Physician Information System, a suite of applications that provides physicians with a single software environment to manage their patients across all care settings using any computing device, including PCs, tablets, smartphones and PDAs. Through a single sign-on, physicians are able to electronically capture charges as well as quickly see lab and test results, medication histories, allergies, vital signs, inputs/outputs, PACS images and other important patient information at the point of care. This improves cash flow and top-line revenue growth, enhances productivity, saves time, increases quality of care and increases physician satisfaction

About PatientKeeper:

As an innovator, creator and leading supplier of integrated physician information systems, PatientKeeper's applications provide a single point of anytime, anywhere access to clinical and financial data from multiple, disparate systems. PatientKeeper's technology automates the provider’s day to transform their experience and improve satisfaction. The Company’s physician-centric portal and mobile applications improve user satisfaction and patient safety, increase revenue and simplify data access and interoperability for community health information exchange. For more information, visit http://www.patientkeeper.com.

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