Eclipsys’ Sunrise Patient Flow solution activated successfully at Singapore General Hospital

Eclipsys Corporation® (NASDAQ: ECLP), The Outcomes Company®, today announced that Singapore General Hospital (SGH), Singapore's oldest and largest acute tertiary hospital and national referral center, has successfully activated Eclipsys’ Sunrise Patient Flow™ solution. The on-time, on-budget technology, automation and process redesign project illustrates how Eclipsys’ integrated and intuitive bed management, bed turnover and patient flow system can quickly bring operational improvements to even the most complex healthcare organizations. With 1,500-beds in its acute care environment, and treating 70,000 patients annually, SGH is successfully using Sunrise Patient Flow to improve the workflows and communications of its clinical, administrative and support staff. Combined with real-time clinical visibility, the solution is yielding substantial clinical and operational advantages as it supports the goal of optimized patient throughput and efficient delivery of patient care.

“The bed management system improves patient flow with real-time information that helps our staff anticipate and manage their workflow,” said Dr Wong Yue Sie, chief operating officer of the SingHealth Group and Singapore General Hospital. “Together, we can drive patient flow through the continuum of a patient's hospital stay with greater efficiency. Ultimately this creates a safer and more satisfactory experience for our patients as we can better coordinate the resources needed to support their care.”

The “big bang” activation of Sunrise Patient Flow was completed in approximately five months — and without any major disruption in SGH’s care delivery. Remarkably, hospital leaders continued with the implementation while the hospital simultaneously dealt with the emergence of the H1N1 pandemic. The experience gave the team insights on how to enhance the system further to support future pandemic situations.

Upon entering the hospital, each SGH inpatient receives a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. A real-time location system (RTLS) identifies patient location via the tag— and automates workflow related to patient movements. As a result, the system enables SGH staff — whether clinical, administrative or support — to eliminate manual tasks related to the movement of patients through the system. Instead of requiring staff members to make multiple phone calls to one another in an attempt to coordinate patient flow, the system automates communicating “current” activities and “next step” requests. These tightly coupled and integrated systems are designed to reduce the amount of time that clinical and support staff spends behind the computer, enabling them to allot more time to focus on patient care.

The deployment of Eclipsys’ enterprise-wide patient flow system included its Bed Turnover module, which is providing SGH’s Environmental Services with the tools necessary to automate and manage bed cleaning requests, as well as housekeeping staff assignments to facilitate the timely cleaning and turnover of beds for incoming patients. The Bed Turnover module enables real-time communication via mobile personal digital assistants (PDAs) to notify housekeeping staff of assignments and coordinate progress, further optimizing and streamlining workflow and bed turnover time.

In addition, advanced interfaces enable Sunrise Patient Flow to share information with a variety of ancillary and administrative systems. For example, it integrates with the emergency department system to coordinate bed requests and placement decisions. It also “communicates” with SGH’s third-party patient administration and billing system. Visual alerts and graphic screens presented via a real-time dashboard drive caregiver priorities, prompting the most efficient delivery of care.

“The SGH activation is certainly an important milestone for this valued client and for our company,” said Tim Rutledge, Eclipsys’ senior vice president of Enterprise Performance Management. “Our structured project methodology and strong partnership approach has enabled us to help our clients activate quickly and see a fast ROI. The fact that we were successful in activating an international client of this size, scale and complexity validates our process and confirms the strengths of our solution.”

Sunrise Patient Flow provides both automated workflow and communications combined with real-time clinical visibility provides greater patient safety, improved clinical workflow and enhanced clinician/staff utilization. The Sunrise Patient Flow platform is built with Microsoft technologies and leverages the latest .NET, WPF, and SQL Server technologies to facilitate rapid and flexible client deployments as well as significant usability advantages. Sunrise Patient Flow, together with the Sunrise EPSi™ decision support and analytic solutions and Eclipsys’ clinical analytics solution, comprise the Eclipsys’ Enterprise Performance Management™ solution suite.

Source: Eclipsys Corporation