Wolters Kluwer Health Supports Evidence-based Care with Multiple ProVation® Order Set Deals
February 5, 2010
The year has started off with a good note for Wolters Kluwer Health, with the information services company bagging several deals for deploying its products, especially its ProVation® Order Sets, at various healthcare organizations. The most recent implementation of its order set management solution is at High Point Regional Health System; selected to enable automation of the development, maintenance and deployment of order sets across its High Point Regional Medical Center.
The North Carolina-based not-for-profit community health system offers its services through its 400-bed High Point Regional Medical Center, The Cancer Center, The Emergency Center, the Piedmont Joint Replacement Center, the Carolina Regional Heart Center, The Women’s Center, and The Neuroscience Center. The system also includes centers for rehab, curative wound care, diabetes self care, vascular care, sleep lab, behavioral health, as well as a regional health education center. With interests to uphold its mission of delivering quality care to its region of service, the Health System has selected Wolters order set solution for installation at its largest facility.
ProVation Order Sets combines the award-winning technology platform designed for clinicians from ProVation® Medical, and evidence-based clinical content from UpToDate® Decision Support. UpToDate Decision covers 7,700 topics across 15 medical specialties, and includes a drug database, above 80,000 pages of text and graphics, 260,000 references, and links to Medline abstracts.
The customizable solution equips caregivers with evidence-based and standardized clinical content by enabling creation and management of order sets, which can be integrated into everyday clinical operations. In addition, through its export capabilities and vendor-neutral mapping, the order sets solution is designed to seamlessly integrate with existing electronic medical records (EMR) or computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, regardless of the system’s vendor. Its order catalog, mapped to various standard terminologies and structured content, allows the integration of CPOE and EMR. The solution is expected to facilitate delivery of better care outcomes, patient safety, improved performance, while complying by regulatory specifications.
A large part of planning treatment for a patient happens during the writing of orders. Order sets, treatment templates used to create orders for patients, have been employed by hospitals to address the challenges faced in terms of medical errors, quality of care, and variations in healthcare processes across facilities. With a set of care processes predefined for the caregivers, order sets help incorporate various established guidelines into the regular workflow.
Coordinating the operations of the entire care team, the order sets interact with the hospital’s various processes and supporting systems such as the approved abbreviations, medication policy manual, drug formulary, and means of following diagnostic procedures. Order sets can be further enriched by integrating best practices, evidence-based and electronic clinical knowledge support into them.
The results of a recent study on an order set project (2008-2009), by Grey Bruce Health Network (GBHN), indicated improved ordering of more than 100 best practices in relation to investigations, medications, consults and treatments; the length of hospitalization reduced from 5.84 to 4.88 days with the use of order sets at 11 hospitals under the GBHN Network; and readmissions reduced by nearly 50%. Additionally, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has attributed to order sets the advantage of reducing the time taken by clinicians to process ordering of the regular and guideline-governed medications and tests. AHRQ also found that order sets play a positive role in influencing the overall implementation of the CPOE.
Wolters Health acquired ProVation Medical, Inc., a vendor providing solutions to streamline procedural documentation, and coding accuracy, in 2006; and UpToDate, in October 2008.
ProVation Medical software has been termed #1 by KLAS in the Clinical Procedure Documentation Market Segment under 2009 Software & Professional Services. The UpToDate electronic clinical knowledge support system has been shown to enhance care outcomes and reduce length of stay (an average of 0.167 days per discharge) in US acute care hospitals, in a 2008 study. However, the study suggests the need for further clarification on its use as an indicator of enhanced performance, either as an independent cause, or in combination with other quality improvement factors. Leveraging the expertise of both offerings, Wolters introduced the ProVation® Order Sets, powered by UpToDate® Decision Support, at the 2009 Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference and Exhibition.
The current deployment of ProVation® Order Sets, powered by UpToDate® Decision Support adds High Point Regional Health System to a list of more than 70 hospitals licensing Wolters’ order set solution. Other recent deployments of ProVation Order Sets solution in the new year include Kendall Regional Medical Center in Miami, South Carolina’s Oconee Medical Center, West Georgia Health System (WGHS) of Georgia, Southeast Alabama Medical Center (SAMC), and Southwest Washington Medical Center.
Wolters Kluwer Health, headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, forms a part of the global publishing and information services company, Wolters Kluwer. The company reported annual revenue for the Health division in the year 2008 to be €687 million (US $933 million), which accounted to 20% of the total revenue recorded by Wolters Kluwer. For the 2009 half year, ended June 30, Wolters Kluwer Health posted revenues worth €365 million (US $496 million).
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