[September 26, 2017] |
|
Wolters Kluwer and Vocera Arm Halifax Health with Rapid Sepsis Identification Solutions for Improved Patient Outcomes and Safety
Wolters
Kluwer Health and Vocera®
Communications, Inc. (VCRA) have teamed to arm Halifax Health
with a high-powered surveillance solution to advance its battle against
sepsis. Linking the real-time clinical surveillance and analytics of the POC
Advisor™ platform with Vocera's (News - Alert) hands-free communications
technology and mobile app accelerates the diagnosis of sepsis and the
timely delivery of patient-specific advice to nurses and other clinical
staff at the point of care.
"Time is the enemy when it comes to sepsis, with the likelihood of death
increasing by 8 percent for each hour that passes without treatment,"
said Ginny Kwong, M.D., Vice President and Chief Medical Information
Officer for Halifax Health. "Complicating early diagnosis is the need to
aggregate data scattered across multiple clinical systems before it can
be analyzed, and the results communicated to the point of care in a
meaningful way.
"POC Advisor and Vocera integrate seamlessly into workflows to overcome
these obstacles," she continued, "quickly alerting our clinicians to a
potential sepsis case so they can make the proper diagnosis and begin
appropriate life-saving treatment to patients at the earliest, most
treatable stages."
Halifax Health is a two-hospital, 678-bed health system that is the
largest medical provider in East Central Florida. A safety net hospital,
Halifax is also one of the state's busiest emergency departments, with
more than 115,000 visits annually. Its goal in deploying a sepsis
solution was to build upon the success of an internal campaign that
resulted in a 33 percent improvement in mortality rates. They chose to
implement POC Advisor because of its scientifically proven results,
published patient outcomes and industry-leading precision and
timeliness. Another key factor was interoperability with Halifax
Health's existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Vocera technology,
making it easy for staff to use.
"At an average of nearly $19,000 per primary diagnosis, more than half
of which is typically not reimbursed by Medicare, the financial cost of
sepsis is staggering," said Sean Benson, Vice President and General
Manager of Specialized Surveillance at Wolters Kluwer Health. "At
Halifax, POC Advisor analyzes more than 300 data points within a
patient's medical record to identify early signs of sepsis, warn
caregivers of escalating risks and push evidence-based guidance to the
point of care via the Vocera Badges and mobile apps that clinicians
already use in their workflow. This results in faster diagnoses and
treatment, which leads to reduced severity, decreased mortality and
lower costs."
POC Advisor is a clinical intelligence platform from Wolters Kluwer that
aggregates, normalizes and analyzes patient data from disparate clinical
systems to drive early detection with predictive accuracy. Real-time
analytics leverage hundreds of rules built into the platform to account
for possible comorbidities and medication abnormalities, enabling
prescriptive alerts with unprecedented levels of sensitivity and
specificity to warn clinicians of patient risks without alert fatigue.
These findings, published in the Journal
of American Medical Informatics Association, also revealed that
POC Advisor cut sepsis mortality in half and reduced 30-day readmissions
by 30 percent, while reducing length of stay.
The Vocera
Badge is a hands-free, voice-controlled communication device that
enables instant two-way and one-to-many conversations. It combines
secure text messaging and alerting and enables voice calls with
intelligent routing by name, role, group and availability.
"Many applications, technologies and devices have been implemented
within hospitals and health systems, but they are used in silos. Too
often, key connection points between these systems are missed. The
integration between Vocera, POC Advisor and the EHR is helping Halifax
Health extract key knowledge from each system, leverage platform
functionality and share valuable information with the right clinicians
at the right time with intelligent alerting," said Rhonda Collins, MSN,
RN, Chief Nursing Officer, Vocera. "It is a comprehensive and
potentially life-saving assessment, detection and communication workflow
that unfolds in less than one minute."
For more information on POC Advisor, visit www.pocadvisor.com
and follow @POC_Advisor on Twitter (News - Alert).
About Vocera The mission of Vocera Communications, Inc. is
to simplify and improve the lives of healthcare professionals and
patients, while enabling hospitals to enhance quality of care and
operational efficiency. In 2000, when the company was founded, we began
to forever change the way care teams communicate. Today, Vocera
continues to offer the leading platform for clinical communication and
workflow. More than 1,400 hospitals and health systems around the world
have selected our solutions for care teams to text securely using
smartphones or make calls with our hands-free, wearable Vocera Badge.
Interoperability between Vocera and more than 120 clinical systems helps
reduce alarm fatigue, speed up staff response times, and improve patient
care, safety and experience. In addition to healthcare, Vocera is at
home in luxury hotels, nuclear facilities, libraries, retail stores and
more. Vocera makes a difference in any industry where workers are on the
move and need to connect instantly with team members and access
resources or information quickly. Learn more at www.vocera.com,
and follow @VoceraComm on Twitter.
About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer N.V. (AEX: WKL) is a
global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in
the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal
sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by
providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with
specialized technology and services.
Wolters Kluwer reported 2016 annual revenues of €4.3 billion. The
company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves
customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40
countries and employs 19,000 people worldwide.
Wolters Kluwer Health is a leading global provider of information and
point of care solutions for the healthcare industry. For more
information about our products and the organization, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com/,
follow @WKHealth
or @Wolters_Kluwer
on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
follow us on LinkedIn,
or follow WoltersKluwerComms on YouTube.
For more information about Wolters Kluwer's solutions and organization,
visit www.wolterskluwer.com,
follow us on Twitter,
Facebook,
LinkedIn,
and YouTube.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170926006557/en/
[ Back To Mobile World Congress's Homepage ]
|