St. Joseph Health System - Humboldt County (SJHS-HC), a member of St. Joseph Health System based in Orange, Calif., was able to track potential influenza cases minutes after California health officials released new requirements regarding influenza reporting. The SJHS-HC hospitals achieved this using SafetySurveillor®, a safety surveillance solution offered by the Premier healthcare alliance.
“Without SafetySurveillor, I would have had to set something up with the lab so they could call me with results and that would have taken more time and involved more people”
After the H1N1 influenza outbreak, public health officials required hospitals to track all influenza cases. Previously, California law only required tracking of influenza in children. Within minutes of the request, the SJHS-HC infection control department added influenza for all outpatients and inpatients at both of its hospitals (St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, Calif., and Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna, Calif.) to their SafetySurveillor real-time alerts. A system alert shortly notified infection control of a positive influenza case in the emergency department, which ultimately improved hospital response time and provided for an extra layer of protection for patients, staff and physicians.
"Without SafetySurveillor, I would have had to set something up with the lab so they could call me with results and that would have taken more time and involved more people," said Suzy Dedekam, RN, BSN, infection control coordinator at St. Joseph Hospital.
With several dozen H1N1 cases at SJHS-HC hospitals, the automated system made the response to public health requests for influenza simple and easy. In addition, the emergency department was trained to use SafetySurveillor and now has access to its online information.
"Additionally, Public Health asked how many respiratory syncytial virus cases we had," Dedekam said. "I was able to find the report in SafetySurveillor, format and download it to a spreadsheet, and send it off to them before I got off the phone with them; they were impressed. Without SafetySurveillor, it would have taken at least an hour of work, not a minute. It's timely, which means I can react immediately to Public Health's requests for data."
More than 270 hospitals rely on SafetySurveillor to effectively manage infection control surveillance, prevention and reporting efforts, as well as facilitating antimicrobial stewardship programs.
SafetySurveillor is a part of Premier's SafetyConnect™ program, a comprehensive, integrated product and service offering aimed at solving safety and infection-related problems facing healthcare organizations today.
Research identifies respiratory transmission potential of H5N1 virus