Corporate News and Events

Twelve Hospitals and Counting: Trinity Health Continues
Nation’s Largest Community-Based Hospital Health IT Initiative

Hospitals Now Live with Registration and Medical Record System

Novi, Michigan – Trinity Health, the nation’s fourth-largest Catholic health system, is preparing to launch its 12th successive hospital system activation of HealthQuest and Cerner PowerChart applications in support of clinical documentation and CPOE.

St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, a three-hospital system in South Bend, Ind., is scheduled to activate the systems in April 2008.

CPOE is one component of a $315 million initiative known as Genesis, an integral element of Trinity Health’s process improvement initiative to implement an integrated registration and electronic health record system across its network of community hospitals across seven core states. Trinity Health is one of the first multi-state health systems to engage in an advanced, large-scale initiative to increase efficiency and improve quality of care, using computerized tools to support clinical process improvements.

The effort has yielded numerous benefits including shortened medication turnaround time, more nursing time at the bedside and reduced length of stay.

When all of Trinity Health’s facilities are live with the systems, Trinity Health will become the third-largest clinical repository of evidence-based knowledge after Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Administration. Already, the clinical data repository maintains records for more than 5.9 million patients, a figure that will increase dramatically over the next few years.

“With acute-care community hospitals located in seven states, the geographic span and clinical experience within Trinity Health is among the most diverse in the country,” said Paul Conlon, PharmD, senior vice president, clinical quality and patient safety, Trinity Health. “One of the many advantages of having clinical technology across all Trinity Health hospitals is the fact that we will now be able to improve care delivery in remote areas where it’s difficult to gain access to a specialist.”

To date, 11 of Trinity Health’s member hospitals have implemented CPOE using evidence-based orders in tandem with a new pharmacy system, online nursing documentation and in some cases, new Emergency Department and radiology / imaging systems. As a result of a strong physician engagement effort, the hospitals using the clinical systems average a 70 percent CPOE rate. The rate is considered exceptional by many in the industry, especially since the majority of physicians using Genesis are independent physicians, not employed by the health system.

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

“Genesis gives Trinity Health the opportunity to improve in the areas that are absolutely critical: limiting mistakes, cutting out waste, eliminating missed opportunities. These are the prizes,” Conlon said.

Trinity Health is the fourth-largest Catholic health care system in the country. Based in Novi, Mich., Trinity Health operates 43 acute-care hospitals, 379 outpatient facilities, 26 long-term care facilities, and numerous home health offices and hospice programs in seven core states. Employing 44,000 full-time staff, Trinity Health reported $6.1 billion in unrestricted revenue and $323.0 million in community benefit ministry in fiscal year 2007. For more information about Trinity Health, visit www.trinity-health.org.