Corporate News and Events

Trinity Health's Adoption of Health Care IT Shown to Improve Savings and Quality

Findings Support RAND Study's Conclusion that Widespread Adoption of Health Care IT Could Save $162 Billion a Year

Novi, Michigan - The U.S. health care system could save lives as well as $162 billion annually with widespread use of health care information technology (HIT), according to a two-year study by the RAND Corporation released September 14, 2005.

Savings are already being seen at Trinity Health, Novi, Mich., which is currently engaged in implementing Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and other clinical systems at 23 member hospitals across the country.

“We saw variable pharmacy costs drop by $6 million in an electronic environment versus a paper environment,” said Narendra Kini, MD, Executive Vice President, Clinical Operations Improvement, Trinity Health. “If you translate that figure across our 23 hospitals, the total pharmacy savings are estimated to be $18 million annually. But the biggest benefits we’ve seen are the reduction of adverse drug events, quality improvements in clinical indicators, and more fficient use of clinical data by our nurses and physicians.”

Trinity Health’s computer-generated system of reporting adverse drug events (ADE) has resulted in physicians modifying medication orders 25,000 times over a four-year period. According to the RAND study, each avoided ADE could save $1,000 to $2,000 in unnecessary health care costs while improving the quality of patient care.

ADE adoption is one element of Trinity Health’s $280-million initiative known as Project Genesis All Trinity Health hospitals have ADE alert systems in place, and seven hospitals in Michigan and Iowa have successfully launched computerized physician order entry (CPOE), with a new pharmacy system, online nursing documentation and EMR, and a new revenue management system.

A primary goal of Project Genesis is to leverage changes in people, process and technology to increase patient safety and quality care. Project Genesis is fundamentally changing the way Trinity Health’s physicians look at drug orders, clinical quality indicators and error reporting.

“The success we’ve enjoyed with Project Genesis is the direct result of the improvements made not only with technology, but also the people and process change that occurred when clinical and revenue management systems were introduced,” said Mary Trimmer, Senior Vice President, Project Genesis Operations, Trinity Health.

According to the RAND study, the U.S. lags behind other countries in its use of EMRs. Only 15-20 percent of hospitals have adopted some version of an EMR system, and the majority of these systems can’t effectively interconnect through networks to coordinate care with other providers.

When all of Trinity Health’s member hospital systems in California, Michigan, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Indiana and Ohio are live with common core systems, Trinity Health will become the third-largest clinical repository of evidence-based knowledge after Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Administration.