OrthoIndy Hospital

Situation

Opened in 2005, OrthoIndy Hospital, formally known as Indiana Orthopedic Hospital, became Indiana’s first physician-owned specialty hospital with a direct focus on orthopedic care, performing over 10,000 surgical cases annually. After implementing MEDITECH as its core Health Information System (HIS), the hospital’s anesthesia team was the last department operating without an IT solution. The outdated, paper anesthesia documentation process was proving to be inefficient, leading to issues with:

• CMS, SCIP and PQRS compliance;
• Patient safety and quality initiatives;
• Data accessibility and legibility for Preop, Intraop and PACU;
• Medication and drug capture accuracy; and,
• Billing accuracy.

OrthoIndy Hospital’s management set out to address these issues by implementing an Anesthesia Information Management System (AIMS) that could:

• Generate preop anesthetic evaluations;
• Digitize the anesthetic record and acute pain service (APS)
  documentation;
• Enhance inter-departmental communication;
• Improve audit processes for wasted drugs; and
• Send electronic charges to coders.

Solution

OrthoIndy Hospital ultimately selected the perioperative and anesthesia experts at SIS to address the anesthesia department’s issues and to meet their organizational goals. Key decision drivers for implementing SIS Anesthesia cited by the hospital included:

• Configurability: OrthoIndy Hospital was able to configure the SIS Anesthesia model system to meet their needs and processes with minimal involvement from SIS or the hospital IT staff. OrthoIndy Hospital’s solution administrator is able to change the system’s configuration as their policies, procedures and workflow evolve.
• Legibility and Comprehensiveness: The electronic format as well as the ability to configure “mandatory” and “suggested” data fields congruent to their policies, procedures and workflow, helps the hospital produce more legible and comprehensive records of anesthetic events.
• Efficiency: SIS Anesthesia’s unique design allows for the use of workflow Wizards within the AIMS. Wizards are a completely configurable feature that helps expedite the input of data through step-by-step documentation in line with the hospital’s processes. Additionally, SIS Anesthesia’s direct integration with MEDITECH allows the system to auto-populate data recorded in the core HIS into the Anesthesia record which can then be documented by exception with verification.
• Interoperability: Key discrete data integration with MEDITECH and other hospital systems, patient data captured in MEDITECH’s nursing modules automatically and securely flow into SIS Anesthesia throughout all stages of care allowing anesthesia providers to quickly complete clinical assessments and documentation. Data integration available includes but is not limited to:
  • Nursing Preop;
  • Lab Values;
  • Home Medications;
  • Allergies; and
  • Problem Lists.

Additionally, patient information captured in the AIMS, such as:

• drugs administered;
• quality indicators; and
• billing information,

flows back into MEDITECH, providing OrthoIndy Hospital with the data necessary to help improve compliance with CMS, SCIP and PQRS reporting standards.

Results

Since Implementing SIS Anesthesia, OrthoIndy Hospital has:

• Improved compliance and reporting at lower costs due to the increased access to data;
• Achieved their goal of automating paper anesthesia processes;
• Experienced high levels of satisfaction from their anesthesia providers; and
• Maintained their already low turnover times.

When asked about the success of the AIMS project, Joseph R. Lafnitzegger, M.D., OrthoIndy Hospital’s Director of Anesthesia remarked, “SIS Anesthesia has been vital in the OrthoIndy Hospital’s ongoing success. The comprehensive amount of perioperative data captured and exchanged between the AIMS and our MEDITECH EHR has resulted in improved compliance and reporting at a lower cost. More importantly, it has also improved communication among physicians, nursing and administration, which we feel ultimately helps improve patient safety and satisfaction. With reform and legislation accelerating the radical change within the healthcare market, SIS Anesthesia has helped us keep pace.”