Phoenix Children’s Hospital adopts Eclipsys’ computerized physician order entry system

Aug 25 2009

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.

“This highly successful CPOE project furthers Phoenix Children’s ongoing commitment to provide their patients with the most efficient and safe hospital experience possible,” said Jay Deady, Eclipsys’ executive vice president of Client Solutions. “It also validates our company’s stated position on the definition of ‘meaningful use’ of EHRs under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act. While some have described the criteria to include CPOE in 2011 as ‘too ambitious,’ the example of Phoenix Children’s, along with a long list of Eclipsys clients that have achieved similar outcomes, demonstrates that meaningful CPOE adoption is very achievable and reasonable. We believe it is critical that a specific timetable must be set to put clinical decision support tools in practitioners’ hands at the point of care in order to transform and improve the quality, safety and costs of our nation’s healthcare system. We continue to push for a rate of CPOE adoption within the ARRA ‘meaningful use’ definition well above the currently proposed easy goal rate of 10 percent that would result in 90 percent of an institution’s care being uncoordinated until higher rates are achieved. Our industry leading CPOE adoption rates and our clients’ 100 percent achievement in exceeding regional and national quality core measure averages continue to be key differentiators for Eclipsys in the market.”

Eclipsys’ CPOE high adoption rates and speed are based on embedded complex algorithms that transcend fundamental order entry to automatically interpret and recalculate new order protocols in real time based on any updates to the patient condition. With more than 30 years of experience, Eclipsys has leveraged the input of thousands of physicians for evidence-based order sets and frequently-used protocols to achieve unmatched, continuous evolution in its CPOE capabilities. Built on the Sunrise Enterprise™ XA extended architecture™, the intuitive, easy-to-adopt solution offers highly complex clinical decision support capabilities that provide workflows tailored to how physicians practice medicine and support fully automating even the most complex order sets and medication ordering, including the exacting protocols, long-range medication schedules and complicated treatment plans commonplace in oncology and pediatric care environments.