Today McKesson announced Eisenhower Medical Center (Rancho Mirage, Calif.) and HealthEast Care System (St. Paul, Minn.) as the winners of the 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award competition. The annual awards program recognizes organizations' outstanding use of McKesson's healthcare information technology (IT) solutions to enhance care delivery and improve operational efficiency.
“It's gratifying to see how our solutions were able to support these innovative organizations in achieving their goals.”
Eisenhower Medical Center - As part of a commitment to improving healthcare, Eisenhower Medical Center's leadership recognized prescribing patterns that suggested overutilization of costly antibiotics typically reserved for drug-resistant bacterial infections. Using an enterprise intelligence solution from McKesson, Eisenhower tracked prescribing patterns and identified areas of inappropriate usage. By engaging physicians in the development of medication protocols for the use of these broad-spectrum antibiotics, Eisenhower improved care by ensuring that patients received the right medications immediately upon admittance to the hospital. In addition to better care, the improvement reduced pharmacy costs by $1.2 million annually.
HealthEast Care System - When two HealthEast hospitals experienced a rise in ambulance diversion hours - while beds elsewhere in the system sat empty - leaders recognized the need for systemic change. By creating a centralized command center that uses McKesson's enterprise patient tracking board, HealthEast has enabled staff members to monitor patient flow throughout the four-hospital system. As a result, diversion hours decreased 63 percent and denied admissions are down, in turn satisfying patients, physicians and hospital staff. Additionally, use of McKesson's InterQual® decision support solution helped decrease observation days by 37 percent and improve regulatory compliance.
"These award winners have demonstrated a superb understanding of how technology can improve patient care and business processes in the hospital," said Michael Brozino, senior vice president of Marketing, McKesson Provider Technologies. "It's gratifying to see how our solutions were able to support these innovative organizations in achieving their goals."
The McKesson Distinguished Achievement Awards program is designed to recognize outstanding achievements by McKesson customers - including hospitals, physician practices and hospice/home health agencies. Each winner receives a $5,000 grant from McKesson to their foundation or charity of choice. The applications for the Hospital/Health System award were scored by an independent panel of third-party judges. This year's judging panel included:
- Alden Solovy, executive director of Business Development, Health Forum
- Adam Gale, president, KLAS
- Lewis B. Redd, chairman, Healthcare Advisory Services
- Greg Smith, senior vice president and chief information officer, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare
- George Vallillee, manager of Radiology Medical Informatics, Spectrum Health
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