KANSAS CITY, Mo. and BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Dec. 2, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The nursing shortage in the United States has left many hospitals scrambling to find ways to minimize the impact of having fewer nurses left to care for an increasing patient population. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than one million new and replacement nurses will be needed in the next five years. UAB Hospital, and Cerner Corporation (Nasdaq:CERN), a global supplier of healthcare solutions, have found a way to use technology to help alleviate the pressures of the nation-wide nursing shortage and to improve patient care.
UAB Hospital uses the Cerner CareAware(TM) MDBus(TM) (medical device bus) solution to connect medical devices to the electronic medical record (EMR). This has improved nursing efficiency, allowing nurses to spend more time at the patient's bedside. Connecting devices to the EMR also has improved patient safety by reducing the likelihood of data-transcription errors.
"Our nurses are one of our most valuable, and lately, one of our scarcest resources," said Joan Hicks, UAB chief information officer. "The Cerner CareAware MDBus solution has been an invaluable asset to us because it allows our nurses to spend more time at the patient's bedside instead of spending time entering data into medical devices and into the electronic medical record."
The Cerner CareAware MDBus solution is a healthcare information technology (HIT) architecture that goes beyond traditional device connectivity by linking medical devices directly to the EMR to create a Single Source of Truth(TM) for patient information, making healthcare safer and more efficient. This connectivity eliminates the need for nurses to gather data generated by medical devices, such as vital signs monitors, and manually enter it into the EMR. Because the device is connected directly to the EMR, it feeds the data gathered by the medical devices into the patient's record.
Since implementing the Cerner CareAware MDBus solution in May of 2008, UAB has realized numerous benefits related to nursing efficiency and patient safety. The hospital has:
- Improved nursing efficiency by 92 percent. Prior to implementing the Cerner CareAware MDBus solution, it used to take nurses at UAB four minutes to enter data into the EMR. Now it takes just 20 seconds for a nurse to verify that the data was sent from the device to the EMR. This has allowed nurses to reallocate as much as three hours per shift to caring directly for patients.
- Improved retroactive charting by 97 percent. UAB nurses have been able to reduce the amount of time they spend searching for and documenting past vital signs from 10 minutes to 20 seconds, allowing for 6,290 nursing hours to be reallocated to other tasks each year.
- Improved device connectivity troubleshooting by 97 percent. The UAB biomed systems analysts who maintain the various devices throughout the health system used to spend 16 hours a week troubleshooting problems with devices. Since implementing the Cerner CareAware MDBus solution, biomed systems analysts only spend on average 30 minutes per week troubleshooting these problems.
- Improved patient-to-device association by 89 percent. Nurses used to manually record in the EMR the different devices connected to the patient. By automating that processes with the Cerner CareAware MDBus solution, nurses are able to verify that the correct devices are associated with the patient in just 10 seconds, instead of the 90 seconds the manual process took. At this rate, UAB nurses will be able to spend more than 1,100 hours per year on tasks other than patient-to-device association.
"Patient safety always is at the heart of healthcare information technology implementations," said Tom Herzog, Cerner DeviceWorks vice president. "It's very rewarding to see a health system like UAB not only improve patient safety by using Cerner(R) solutions, but also to give nurses more time to focus on patient care instead of data entry."
In addition to the efficiency benefits garnered from connecting devices to the EMR, the Cerner CareAware MDBus solution also helps improve patient safety. Data transcription errors related to nurses entering the wrong device data into the EMR are virtually eliminated because of the direct two-way communication between the medical device and the EMR. Freeing up nursing time previously spent on documentation to allow nurses to interact directly with patients also can have a positive impact on patient safety.
About Cerner
Cerner is transforming healthcare by eliminating error, variance and waste for healthcare providers and consumers around the world. Cerner solutions optimize processes for healthcare organizations ranging in size from single-doctor practices, to health systems, to entire countries, for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and for the healthcare commerce system. These solutions are licensed by more than 8,000 facilities around the world, including approximately 2,100 hospitals; 3,300 physician practices covering more than 30,000 physicians; 500 ambulatory facilities, such as laboratories, ambulatory centers, cardiac facilities, radiology clinics and surgery centers; 600 home-health facilities; and 1,500 retail pharmacies. The following are trademarks of Cerner: Cerner, Cerner's logo, CareAware, MDBus and Single Source of Truth. (Nasdaq:CERN). For more information about Cerner, please visit our Web site at www.cerner.com.