Bayfront Medical Center to implement CareFocus clinical surveillance solution from Thomson Reuters

Thomson ReutersNov 10 2009

Bayfront Medical Center has selected Clinical Xpert CareFocus from Thomson Reuters as its clinical surveillance solution for improving Core Measures outcomes and patient safety indicator (PSI) scores while also supporting infection control and pharmacy intervention initiatives.

CareFocus (formerly MercuryMD) uses real-time data to identify patients deemed "at-risk" based on pre-set criteria. Using hospital-defined clinical profiles, CareFocus continuously monitors patients' laboratory results, vital signs, medications, diagnoses, and a host of other clinical data elements. When patients meet a specific profile's criteria, CareFocus automatically notifies clinicians -- via mobile and desktop devices -- so they can intervene immediately.

"Bayfront Medical Center continues to lead the way in providing quality care and patient safety to our communities. CareFocus allows us to improve that care by proactively identifying patients who need immediate attention before their conditions deteriorate," said Tim Exinberger, chief nursing officer and vice president of patient services at Bayfront Medical Center.

In addition to its initial focus on improving Core Measures and PSI outcomes, Bayfront will use CareFocus in its pharmacy and infection control departments and plans to extend use to other departments. "Using CareFocus, our clinicians will have real-time data and be well equipped to more quickly identify, respond to and care for those patients who are at-risk for life threatening infections such as sepsis or pneumonia," said Carol Sarokas, infection prevention and control coordinator at Bayfront.

"We estimate our clinical pharmacists spend approximately thirty-five hours a week on manual chart review. CareFocus will help alleviate these manual processes so our pharmacists can spend more time delivering higher quality patient care," said Joe Hoffmann, Pharm. D., director of pharmacy at Bayfront.

This extends Bayfront's use of the Clinical Xpert suite through 2012. The health system currently uses Clinical Xpert Navigator to improve clinical workflow by delivering comprehensive patient data in real-time to clinicians via Web portal, BlackBerry smartphones and other mobile devices.

"In addition to helping us improve our Core Measures and PSI scores, CareFocus will be a great resource in support of our antibiotic stewardship program. By providing all clinicians with real-time patient data and automatically identifying patients most in need of care, CareFocus strengthens the link between our pharmacists and infection control personnel so they can provide the optimal treatment program for any given patient," said Exinberger.