Corporate News and Events

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

Nine Hospital Systems Now Live with Registration and Medical Record System

Novi, Michigan – Trinity Health, the nation’s fourth-largest Catholic health system, recently notched its eighth successive hospital system activation of HealthQuest and Cerner PowerChart applications in support of clinical documentation and CPOE.

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 throughout the organization. Trinity Health is one of the first multi-state health systems to engage in a large-scale initiative to increase efficiency and improve quality of care, using computerized tools to support clinical process improvements.

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 4.5 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 Dr. Narendra Kini, MD, Senior Vice President, Clinical Operations Improvement, 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, nine of Trinity Health’s Ministry Organizations have implemented CPOE in tandem with a new pharmacy system, online nursing documentation and in some cases, new Emergency Department and radiology / imaging systems.

St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, Mich., was the latest to activate the Genesis systems in March 2006. St. Mary joins its sister hospitals in southeast Michigan that are live with Cerner-based systems: St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Clinton Township, and Mercy Hospital – Port Huron. In March 2007, St. Joseph Mercy Oakland will become Trinity Health’s 10th hospital to launch Genesis.

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,” Kini said. “These are the prizes.”