Innovative health care information technology solutions to improve quality of patient care

Oct 5 2009

Methodist Hospital of Arcadia, California, has launched an integrated deployment of innovative health care information technology (HIT) solutions designed to help improve the quality of patient care and deliver operational efficiencies. MedPlus®, the health care information technology subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE: DGX), provided the integrated solution to help Methodist reduce the length of stay associated with patients and help realize gains in efficiency and revenue. The deployment is also supporting Methodist's vision of providing "The Next Generation of Care" for its patients, physicians and staff.

The MedPlus solutions enable health care organizations to enhance performance by helping them to improve patient care and maximize business results with features that support the efficient collection, access and use of clinical, financial and administrative information. Methodist physicians can now spend more time with patients without the need to visit the Medical Records department to sign deficiencies or request historical records. Additionally, physicians have access to a patient's complete legal medical record online and can access information such as lab orders, radiology images, transfer documents and demographics data through a single front end.

"The Centergy Clinical Portal was the perfect entry point for bringing our physicians on-line with technology," explains Methodist CIO Kara Marx. "As Methodist moves ahead with replacing legacy technology, MedPlus' Centergy portal is putting our staff at ease by serving as a unified front end to all of our disparate systems. We were able to enjoy results quickly as our physician acceptance of Centergy has been truly remarkable."

Physicians are sharing best practices order sets to treat particular conditions through the Clinical Portal, enhancing the quality of patient care. Additionally, Methodist's performance improvement and utilization management departments are using the Centergy/ChartMaxx combination to access historical records online. This is particularly important for Methodist's Emergency Department (ED), which can now quickly access older patient records when treating ED patients. The new system provides ED physicians and staff with instantaneous access to older records, which had previously been stored offsite and took time to locate and deliver.

"Centergy, combined with the power of ChartMaxx, can help to bring Methodist immediate benefits while also positioning the hospital to meet its long-term electronic health record (EHR) implementation goals," says Richard Mahoney, MedPlus president and vice president of Healthcare Information Solutions for Quest Diagnostics. "As Methodist moves ahead on its multi-year back-end conversion timeline, the Centergy Clinical Portal remains a constant interface for staff and physicians. It will continue serving, by design, as a singular point of entry for other systems currently in use, as well as those being implemented down the road."

The Clinical Portal is the primary hospital-facing component of MedPlus' Centergy suite of interconnected modular health care solutions. The suite also includes full-scale Data Exchange Services to facilitate the secure exchange and sharing of health information across systems and sites, as well as a practice-focused portal and consumer-facing patient portal. Centergy features seamless integration with ChartMaxx and Quest Diagnostics' proven, scalable network of more than 150,000 physicians to achieve connectivity to a large group of "off-the-grid" providers. Centergy offers immediate connectivity to 100 industry-leading electronic medical records (EMRs) and can therefore serve as a user-friendly migration path to interconnectivity for more than 67,000 physician offices nationwide.