St. Luke's Episcopal Health System expands its use of McKesson IT and Automation Solutions to enhance care quality and patient safety

Published: 06/09

ATLANTA, GA, USA - (HealthTech Wire) - St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System is expanding its use of advanced information technologies and automation solutions from McKesson to better connect clinicians and staff members across the enterprise and enhance patient outcomes. Houston-based St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital is the first healthcare organization in the country to implement the new Horizon Clinicals® Care Team Release, which supports a “one patient, one care team, one plan” approach to care delivery. In addition to adding extensive new clinical functionality to the health system, new automation solutions will further expand St. Luke’s “closed-loop” approach to medication and patient safety.

“St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital has a long history of clinical innovation in collaboration with strong partners such as The Texas Heart® Institute,” said Jack Sandefur, CIO, St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System. “This spirit is also reflected in our partnership with McKesson. Together we are working to implement innovative information technology solutions that will improve efficiency and promote excellence, engaging all our staff in improving patient safety.”

The high level of clinical integration delivered with the Care Team Release enables patient data, including medication reconciliation, to be shared across settings and episodes of care. With a common view of the patient’s condition and needs across all members of the care team, every clinical discipline has the same information to work collaboratively instead of in departmental silos. St. Luke’s and its patients will reap the quality advantages associated with organization-wide care planning enabled by Horizon Expert Plan™, physician workflow efficiencies gained from Horizon Expert Notes™, as well as key enhancements to decision support and advanced dosing capabilities in the core clinical applications. In addition, the integration between McKesson’s pharmacy automation tools, point-of-care technologies and pharmaceutical distribution services will increase safety, reduce complexity and drive efficiency from the bedside back.

Caregivers at St. Luke’s are particularly excited about the capabilities of Horizon Expert Plan, the first solution that unifies medical and interdisciplinary care plans to drive evidence-based practice. Nurses can quickly access patient care plans – and then document exactly how they have implemented the plans – greatly streamlining the delivery of care. The solution makes it possible to easily access and share information across disciplines by automating what was traditionally a time- and labor-intensive paper-based process.

“Horizon Expert Plan enables us to achieve an interdisciplinary approach to care planning that makes it truly relevant for clinicians,” said Karen Myers, MSN, RN, CNN, vice president and CNO, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. “In combination with McKesson’s nursing documentation solution, interventions can be linked to goals, guiding clinical practice at the bedside. As we continue to incorporate clinical pathways and expand evidence-based practice to all patient care units, we expect to improve our quality and consistency of patient care and decrease length of stay.”

St. Luke’s is also implementing Horizon Expert Notes, which integrates inpatient physician documentation with existing clinical applications, such as computerized physician order entry, to help physicians more efficiently manage their workflow. Horizon Expert Notes enables physicians to create all types of inpatient documentation, including history and physical, discharge summary and progress, consult, operative and procedure notes. The tool also allows physicians to choose how to create these notes by writing on tablet PCs, through dictation or speech recognition, or typing/entering information via customized structured forms and templates.

In addition, St. Luke’s is driving home its commitment to patient safety by implementing McKesson’s AcuDose-Rx® family of medication dispensing cabinets, coupled with decision support capabilities to optimize medication management and the use of technology. Tighter integration between the medication cabinets, clinical technologies – including bar code medication scanning – and pharmaceutical distribution services will mean a safer and more streamlined process that helps ensure medications are available when and where needed by patients and clinicians. The main St. Luke's facility is also deploying automated medication dispensing and inventory control technologies as well as a high-speed medication packager.

“We are extremely pleased to extend our long and successful partnership with St. Luke’s as they continue to advance their mission to be the health system of choice in the Houston market,” said Sunny Sanyal, chief operating officer, McKesson Provider Technologies. “The growing complexity of patient care makes it more important than ever for hospitals to use advanced technologies to build in highly specialized support for clinicians so they are empowered to deliver the best and safest care possible.”

The Care Team Release is a key component of Patient Care Advantage, which builds on the broad acceptance and adoption of Horizon Clinicals with powerful solutions for patient safety, capacity/patient flow and workforce management. Both are part of Horizon Advantage, a family of solutions that together solve the biggest issues facing healthcare by uniting the patient, clinicians, pharmacy, payor and employer. McKesson understands the interdependencies among these constituents and delivers solutions that enable health systems to improve patient care quality, operational excellence and financial performance.