KANSAS CITY and COLUMBIA, Mo., Nov. 17, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- More than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic conditions, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.(1) These chronic conditions account for nearly 75 percent of medical care spending in the United States.(2) The University of Missouri (MU) and Cerner Corporation (Nasdaq:CERN) are working together to use healthcare information technology (HIT) to help doctors and patients actively manage this epidemic of chronic disease.
MU and Cerner were recently awarded the Collaboration Award from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) for their work to create a medical home for patients treated by MU family medicine physicians.
"The CHIME Collaboration Award recognizes that MU and Cerner formed a partnership resulting in a solution beneficial to both organizations and patients," said Michael LeFevre, MD, professor of family and community medicine and chief medical information officer at MU. "We believe that by improving the flow of information and by making the type of information we present to providers easily available, we will improve the care of patients. That's why we did this, to improve the lives of patients."
Through the medical home treatment approach, a personal physician leads a team to coordinate care for patients across the complex healthcare system. The goal of a medical home is to improve chronic disease care through coordinating treatment with the patient's medical care team; following up with the patient to help him self-manage his condition; providing clinical decision support tools for physicians; and using information systems to facilitate access to patient information, best practices and analytics.
"Our awards committee was impressed that the collaboration between MU and Cerner went beyond the application of a product," said Anne Wizauer, CHIME's senior director of membership development. "They saw that the innovation involved in the project was above and beyond business as usual."
Both organizations have worked together to improve the flow of information in the physician office setting, getting evidence-based guidelines to the point of care, and management of populations rather than individuals through the use of quality reporting tools. MU worked with Cerner to create a disease-specific summary screens within the Cerner Millennium(r) electronic medical record (EMR) that allows primary care physicians to quickly access information needed to treat patients with chronic illness. The PowerChart(r) summary screen includes:
* Cerner MPages condition summary screens that present the physician with the right information at the right time; * Evidence-based treatment algorithms that present the physician with the best-practice recommendations based on the patient's condition; and * Cerner Discern(r) Analytics population and provider performance reports (analytics) that aggregate performance metrics, allowing physicians to compare and improve their individual clinical performance against standardized performance targets and peers' performance.
The Medical Home model has allowed MU family practice physicians to improve the quality of care they provide to patients, and to decrease the amount of time physicians spend searching through the EMR for important patient data. MU family practice physicians have seen the following benefits from their collaboration with Cerner on the medical home project:
* Decreased time spent accessing important patient data by an average of four minutes per patient; * Decreased number of mouse clicks needed to access pertinent patient data from 60 to three; * Improved the ability to find pertinent patient information from 94 percent to 100 percent; and * Improved resident training on best-practices by using evidence- based treatment algorithms.
"The Medical Home collaboration between Cerner and the University of Missouri puts the patient at the heart of medical and technological best practices," said Trace Devanny, Cerner president. "We're proud that the innovative solutions produced by our teams working together will be able to improve the treatment of chronic conditions for patients around the world."
By June 2009, all University of Missouri family medicine practices will use the Medical Home model to track the treatment of patients with the 12 most common chronic illnesses. Currently, 46 physicians in MU's Family and Community Medicine department are using the Medical Home model to treat patients with chronic conditions. MU's faculty and resident family medicine physicians provide care for nearly 100,000 patient visits per year at eight teaching clinics, including two serving rural mid-Missouri populations. Cerner will begin offering the technology developed for the Medical Home project to all of its clients in early 2009.
About Cerner
Cerner is taking the paper chart out of healthcare, eliminating error, variance and waste in the care process. With more than 6,000 clients worldwide, Cerner is the leading supplier of healthcare information technology. The following are trademarks of Cerner: Cerner, Cerner's logo, Cerner Millennium, Cerner PowerChart and Discern. Nasdaq:CERN. For more information about Cerner, please visit our Web site at www.cerner.com.
About the University of Missouri
The University of Missouri School of Medicine has improved health, education and research in Missouri and beyond for more than 160 years. MU physicians treat patients from every county in the state, and MU is a primary provider of training for all physicians in Missouri. The School of Medicine's more than 650 faculty physicians and scientists educate approximately 1,000 medical students, residents, fellows and other students seeking advanced degrees. Their research is focused on potentially lifesaving discoveries that address the most prevalent health problems.
(1) Bodenheimer T, Wagner EH, Grumbach K. Improving primary care for patients with chronic illness. JAMA 2002;288(14):1775-1779. (2) Chen A, Brown R, Archibald N, Alliota S, Fox P. Best practices in coordinated care. Princeton, N.J.: Mathematica Policy Research; 2000