McKesson recognizes organizations for advancing patient care with
healthcare IT
Today McKesson announced Eisenhower Medical Center (Rancho Mirage,
Calif.) and HealthEast Care System (St. Paul, Minn.) as the winners of
the 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award competition. The annual awards
program recognizes organizations’ outstanding use of McKesson’s
healthcare information technology (IT)
solutions to enhance care delivery and improve operational efficiency.
Eisenhower Medical Center –
As part of a commitment to improving
healthcare, Eisenhower Medical Center’s leadership recognized
prescribing patterns that suggested overutilization of costly
antibiotics typically reserved for drug-resistant bacterial infections.
Using an enterprise intelligence solution from McKesson, Eisenhower
tracked prescribing patterns and identified areas of inappropriate
usage. By engaging physicians in the development of medication protocols
for the use of these broad-spectrum antibiotics, Eisenhower improved
care by ensuring that patients received the right medications
immediately upon admittance to the hospital. In addition to better care,
the improvement reduced pharmacy costs by $1.2 million annually.
HealthEast Care System –
When two HealthEast hospitals
experienced a rise in ambulance diversion hours – while beds elsewhere
in the system sat empty – leaders recognized the need for systemic
change. By creating a centralized command center that uses McKesson’s
enterprise patient tracking board, HealthEast has enabled staff members
to monitor patient flow throughout the four-hospital system. As a
result, diversion hours decreased 63 percent and denied admissions are
down, in turn satisfying patients, physicians and hospital staff.
Additionally, use of McKesson’s InterQual
®
decision support
solution helped decrease observation days by 37 percent and improve
regulatory compliance.
“These award winners have demonstrated a superb understanding of how
technology can improve patient care and business processes in the
hospital,” said Michael Brozino, senior vice president of Marketing,
McKesson Provider Technologies. “It’s gratifying to see how our
solutions were able to support these innovative organizations in
achieving their goals.”
The McKesson Distinguished Achievement Awards program is designed to
recognize outstanding achievements by McKesson customers – including
hospitals, physician practices and hospice/home health agencies. Each
winner receives a $5,000 grant from McKesson to their foundation or
charity of choice. The applications for the Hospital/Health System award
were scored by an independent panel of third-party judges. This year’s
judging panel included:
- Alden Solovy, executive director of Business Development, Health Forum
- Adam Gale, president, KLAS
- Lewis B. Redd, chairman, Healthcare Advisory Services
- Greg Smith, senior vice president and chief information officer,
Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare
- George Vallillee, manager of Radiology Medical Informatics, Spectrum
Health
For more information on this year’s award winners, including case
studies and video profiles, visit our
website
.
PR Contact
Contact Public Relations