Eclipsys Corporation® (NASDAQ: ECLP), The Outcomes Company®, today announced that Phoenix Children’s Hospital, one of the 10 largest freestanding children’s hospitals in the country, has successfully completed an enterprise-wide activation of the company’s computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system, Sunrise Acute Care™.
Eclipsys’ CPOE solution, recognized by KLAS as leading the industry in physician adoption in acute care settings, is in deep and broad use at Phoenix Children’s, with physicians and other authorized clinical staff placing 99 percent of orders — both medication and non-medication — electronically.
According to Robert L. Meyer, Phoenix Children’s president and chief executive officer, a major factor in the hospital’s successful CPOE launch was its hybrid rollout methodology. Each department received embedded clinical IT staff support and advanced training for “super users” who were empowered to roll out the system at their own pace, with a common hard go-live deadline.
“Following a mandate from our medical committee to take CPOE hospital-wide, we decided to take a very different approach to physician adoption of electronic order and decision support,” said Meyer. “Thanks to the high level of commitment from physician champions who understood how CPOE makes clinical life better, we were able to launch with a 95 percent adoption rate. This was higher than we expected. In fact, achieving this important milestone was truly a joint effort between the physician community and the information technology department. The level of acceptance and appreciation by our physicians really has been a major victory, with everyone aligned toward the same goal.”
In the months since their go-live date, Phoenix Children’s has sustained a 99 percent adoption rate for CPOE. Each day, Phoenix Children’s physicians and other authorized clinical staff place an average of 3,250 orders electronically, 750 of which are medication orders. Only one percent of orders remain on paper. Physicians report they are especially pleased with the ability to sign orders electronically, and anticipate that this one capability alone will deliver significant time savings. Phoenix Children’s continues very close monitoring to confirm this high level of electronic order adoption is sustained.
Major Milestone to Extend CPOE Throughout the Care Environment
Phoenix Children’s hospital-wide activation extends its long-term use of Eclipsys’ CPOE solution in the pediatric intensive care and neonatal intensive care units. It is the latest milestone in a multi-phase effort to extend enabling technologies throughout the care environment. Last fall, Phoenix Children’s activated Eclipsys’ clinical documentation solution, Knowledge-Based Charting™ to transform nursing notes into electronic format and establish the foundation for an enterprise electronic medical record (EMR) with clinical decision support. In combination with Eclipsys’ document imaging solution, the new clinical solutions will provide Phoenix Children’s care delivery team with fully integrated clinical workflows to help improve clinical outcomes, care efficiency and turnaround time.
The enterprise-wide clinical technology initiative also builds upon Phoenix Children’s successful use of Eclipsys’ revenue cycle solutions, which have supported vast improvements in pre-service activities and claim processing efficiency.