Lutheran Medical Center implements Medsphere's OpenVista EHR solution

Dec 7 2010

Lutheran Medical Center (LMC) and Medsphere Systems Corporation today announced the successful implementation of Medsphere's OpenVista® electronic health record (EHR) solution throughout the hospital. The full service 476-bed teaching hospital is now on track to achieve meaningful use and qualify for millions of dollars made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

“Medsphere congratulates Lutheran Medical Center on OpenVista go live and, more importantly, moving so quickly to embrace the solution clinically and organizationally”

Since implementing OpenVista only a few weeks ago, LMC has embraced the comprehensive open source health IT system throughout the facility. Clinician adoption of the system, the key to meeting meaningful use and true clinical transformation, is virtually universal. Now in its first stage toward a paperless environment, LMC physicians are entering 93 percent of medications through OpenVista's Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) Module, far surpassing the 30 percent required by the federal government for meaningful use.

"I am so proud of the way Lutheran Medical Center, as an institution, has adopted the OpenVista EHR and is making it an integral part of the care we provide," said Wendy Z. Goldstein, president and CEO of Lutheran Medical Center. "It took a lot of work to get here, but the transition has gone very smoothly; the clinicians and staff deserve endless praise. I have no doubt that, with Medsphere's valuable assistance, we will be prepared for meaningful use next year."

Managing over 627,000 outpatient and 66,000 emergency room visits annually, the 687 attending physicians, 200 residents and 600 nurses at LMC can now access a range of OpenVista features: CPOE, medication order management (pharmacy), laboratory, radiology, and nutrition and food service. Enhanced emergency room efficiency is also part of the solution through an ED Tracking Board that LMC developed and Medsphere will share with other clients through the Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem. The entire system becomes interoperable with third-party applications through Medsphere's Interface Suite. (Visit http://www.medsphere.com/solutions/openvista-for-the-enterprise for more on OpenVista applications and benefits to clinical workflow and patient care.)

Improved clinician collaboration and communication facilitated by OpenVista also enabled LMC providers to transition to an EHR environment with minimal workflow disruptions. Reductions in administrative paperwork create more time for patients to receive increasingly efficient, well-informed medical care.

"Now medications go straight from the doctor's head to the pharmacy—it's wonderful," said Helen Buckel, R.N., a nurse manager at LMC. "Doctors and nurses are able to focus more on what we were trained to do instead of paperwork. And I don't have a crowd of people at my station every morning looking for meds and paper charts."

With OpenVista in place, LMC is better able to maximize teaching opportunities in real time.

"The residents have a better sense of what medication reconciliation is, because it's gone from disjointed information on several sheets of paper to one screen with all relevant data," explained Beth Raucher, M.D., LMC's chief medical officer. "Recently, when there was a question about the medication a resident ordered, we were able to have a whole discussion about that in real time, and we were able to see and decipher exactly what happened. Several days ago, it would have taken hours to get the same information."

Added Chief Operating Officer Claudia Caine, "We saw an immediate improvement in efficiency and access to information. Our EHR clearly improves our ability to take care of patients. We don't have handwriting issues for doctor orders. If there's a medication allergy, there's an instant alert in the system. It's also easier and faster for the pharmacy or laboratory to double check things as well--for each department to be better partners in care."

"Moving forward, we expect the improvements from CPOE to position us for rapid adoption of our next two phases of implementation: clinical documentation and barcode medication administration," said LMC Chief Nursing Officer Rosanne Raso, R.N. "All combined, these will go a long way toward overall enhancements in quality and efficiency."

"Medsphere congratulates Lutheran Medical Center on OpenVista go live and, more importantly, moving so quickly to embrace the solution clinically and organizationally," said Mike Doyle, Medsphere president and CEO. "As is already demonstrated, the ultimate beneficiaries will be LMC patients. This shows quite clearly that OpenVista is just as effective in large urban clinical environments as it is in rural community hospitals."

In the greater New York area, Lutheran will soon be joined by New Jersey's Meadowlands Hospital, which is going live this week, and Hoboken University Medical Center, scheduled to go live in the first quarter of next year. Regionally, Medsphere has already implemented OpenVista in Silver Hill Hospital, a nationally recognized psychiatric facility in New Canaan, Conn., and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, a seven-facility acute, long-term and psychiatric care network.

As the most fully commercialized version of the Department of Veterans Affairs VistA EHR system, OpenVista is a responsible reapplication of the VA's $8.5 billion VistA investment. OpenVista is proven to enhance medical care and remove the cost barrier to EHR implementation that hospitals typically encounter when considering proprietary, closed-source products. Medsphere's subscription-based and transparent pricing model for implementation, maintenance and support services make effective health IT resources financially possible for every hospital, clinic and integrated care system in the United States.