BOCA RATON, Fla., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Eclipsys Corporation(R) , The Outcomes Company(R), today announced that Springhill Medical Center, a comprehensive medical-surgical hospital based in Mobile and serving southern Alabama, has activated the latest release of Eclipsys Sunrise ED Manager.
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Released in March 2005, this latest version of the company’s software for Emergency Departments meets the unique, unpredictable needs of ED clinicians who must make decisions quickly and keep track of several patients concurrently in varying stages of care. By providing the right clinical information at the point of care at the right time in the patient’s course of treatment, Sunrise ED Manager facilitates optimum workflow, efficiency and accuracy. In addition, by automating functions such as registration, triage, patient tracking, physician orders, documentation and prescription writing, the system helps Emergency Departments streamline workflows and improve patient outcomes.
The activation of Sunrise ED Manager was completed as part of the Springhill Medical Center’s strategic goal of improving patient care and safety by using technology to automate manual processes. To support this goal, Springhill has also installed Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager(TM), an enterprise-wide electronic health record (EHR) and clinical workflow solution. Because ED Manager and Clinical Manager share a common architecture and clinical data repository, they support seamless continuity of care across the enterprise’s multiple venues.
“ED Manager has helped improve patient flow and throughput in our busy and overcrowded Emergency Room,” said Jeff St. Clair, chief operating officer, Springhill Medical Center. “With real-time status displays for orders and procedures, our staff is able to determine at a glance where our issues affecting throughput exist. Previously we were only able to find our bottlenecks after they occurred. Now we see them before they happen. Our ability to enter our orders electronically has made the ER a faster and more efficient place to receive care.”
Springhill ED physicians and clinicians have quickly seen how the software’s capabilities and performance benefit care processes. “Already we’ve been able to streamline our processes and greatly improve communications between physicians and nurses,” said Pam Shedd, project manager responsible for clinical information systems at Springhill. “More importantly, we’re able to improve patient care and satisfaction, as well as reduce wait times. It’s a better experience for the patients as well as the physicians and nurses providing emergency care. The implementation of Sunrise ED Manager is an important milestone in reaching our strategic goals.”
The Springhill Emergency Department handles 31,000 visits every year. Before the implementation of Sunrise ED Manager, clinicians used paper charts and a grease board to track patients. Now, patients are quickly registered electronically and the system automatically populates the department’s electronic tracking board. This provides a visual alert for the ED staff that a patient is ready for triage. “Nurses are now able to check the status of every patient, prioritize bed assignments and handle physician orders and medications quickly and accurately,” Shedd noted.
Springhill also is using the Sunrise ED Manager Knowledge Package, a series of 29 pre-configured structured notes that are designed for physician documentation at the point of care. These evidence-based documentation templates, which cover a range of conditions commonly seen in Emergency Departments, are designed to capture as much clinical data as possible in a structured format. This helps save time, improve accuracy and minimize typing. Physicians and other clinicians can electronically capture patient information, such as allergies, lab results, medications and chief complaints.
According to Shedd, the Springhill activation of Sunrise ED Manager is a work in progress. She says the medical center’s nurses and physicians are continually finding new ways to use the power and flexibility of the software to transform their workflows. “We’ve been customizing columns on the tracking board with visual cues for lab orders and reconfiguring the structured notes to suit physician preferences. We’re looking at what we do presently and how we want to change things. But since we went live on ED Manager, we haven’t looked back.”
The recent activation of Sunrise ED Manager and Sunrise Clinical Manager is the latest of many projects that Eclipsys and Springhill have completed together. Five years ago, the hospital decided to outsource its IT operations to Eclipsys, enabling the hospital to focus exclusively on providing healthcare while Eclipsys focused on stabilizing Springhill Medical Center’s infrastructure. This arrangement helped improve processes throughout the organization. In addition, having implemented Eclipsys Sunrise PACS(TM) (picture archiving and communications system) in April, Springhill has the first high-availability Windows PACS in the U.S. As a result, its Radiology department is now 99-percent filmless.
About Springhill Medical Center
Springhill Medical Center is a 252-bed, privately owned facility offering a comprehensive medical-surgical hospital with all private rooms. Springhill serves the residents of Mobile and the greater Southwest Alabama region and offers a complete range of acute and outpatient care, including open-heart, laser, laparoscopic and other surgical services; laboratory, x-ray, electro- diagnostics, ultrasound, CT, MRI, GI lab, heart catheterization and diagnostic services; a comprehensive cancer program including mammography, outpatient chemotherapy and radiation therapy; and comprehensive women’s and children’s care, with full maternity suites, a nursery, special care nursery and a pediatric special-care unit. Springhill’s fully staffed Emergency Department has board-certified emergency medicine physicians on-site 24 hours a day.
With an emphasis on providing high-quality clinical care in a family- focused environment, Springhill Medical Center has established a reputation for offering its patients the “best of both worlds.” Springhill is “small” enough to offer attentive, personalized care, yet “large” enough to offer the comprehensive healthcare you’d expect from a regional leader. Celebrating 30 years of service to the community, Springhill Medical Center looks to the future while remaining committed to its mission: “To efficiently provide healthcare that is unmatched in quality, convenience and benefit of use in a courteous and family-oriented manner.” For more information, see http://www.springhillmedicalcenter.com .
About Eclipsys
Eclipsys is a leading provider of advanced clinical, financial and management information software and service solutions to more than 1,500 healthcare facilities. Eclipsys empowers healthcare organizations to improve patient safety, revenue cycle management and operational efficiency through innovative information solutions. For more information, see http://www.eclipsys.com or email info@eclipsys.com .
Statements in this news release concerning the scope of the agreements in place between the parties and the benefits provided by Eclipsys software and outsourcing services are forward-looking statements and actual results may differ from those projected due to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Customization of Eclipsys software is complex and time-consuming. Results depend upon a variety of factors and can vary by client. Each client’s circumstances are unique and may include unforeseen issues that make it more difficult than anticipated to implement or derive benefit from software, outsourcing or consulting services. The success and timeliness of the company’s services often depends at least in part upon client involvement, which can be difficult to control. Eclipsys is required to meet specified performance standards, and the contract can be terminated or its scope reduced under certain circumstances. More information about company risks is available in recent Form 10-K and other filings made by Eclipsys from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Special attention is directed to the portions of those documents entitled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” Eclipsys Corporation and The Outcomes Company are registered trademarks of Eclipsys Corporation. Sunrise ED Manager, Sunrise Clinical Manager, Sunrise, and Sunrise PACS are trademarks of Eclipsys Corporation. Other product and company names in this news release are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Eclipsys Michael E. Donner SVP & Chief Marketing Officer (media) (561) 322-4485 michael.donner@eclipsys.com Robert J. Colletti SVP & Chief Financial Officer (investors) (561) 322-4650 investor.relations@eclipsys.com
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CONTACT: media, Michael E. Donner, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer,+1-561-322-4485, or michael.donner@eclipsys.com, or investors, Robert J.Colletti, SVP & Chief Financial Officer, +1-561-322-4650, orinvestor.relations@eclipsys.com, both of Eclipsys