Showing Them the Evidence

Robert Murphy, M.D., CMIO of the 11-hospital Memorial Hermann Health Care system, based in Houston, has been helping to lead his organization forward with CPOE through a rolling progression of go-lives (they are live with physician order entry in four hospitals house-wide, as well as in nine of their 11 hospitals' emergency departments, to date). As part of that process, he says, “We really make sure we prepare through clinical process and transformational work. Evidence-based care is a part of that transformation, and often requires a great deal of work with the clinical leaders and administrators. Zynx has been a critical element to help make us successful” in that ongoing effort, he says. “For us, the investment in Zynx was one involving a long-term commitment, because it's a fair amount of work to get started, to build the infrastructure to make it work with” the health system's core EHR. Based on work done so far, he reports, “We can now update our order sets in about a two- or three-week period.”

What's more, use of evidence-based order sets is a key component in clinical performance improvement, says Jeffrey Rose, M.D., vice president clinical excellence, informatics, and CMIO, at Ascension Health, the St. Louis-based health system with 79 hospitals in 20 states. “I believe that most things in both the acute-care and ambulatory settings begin with a physician's order,” Rose says. “As a result, if you influence how physicians order, you can influence how care is delivered. And if you do that based on evidence, the likelihood is that you're going to raise the bar for everyone practicing, narrowing variation in practice, and improving quality.”

With his company's customers having already generated more than 160,000 customized order sets and care plans, and the numbers increasing rapidly, Zynx's Weingarten says he's “very optimistic” going forward. In this area of healthcare IT, certainly, the sky seems to be the limit when it comes to growth opportunities in the next several years.

Healthcare Informatics 2011 June;28(6):54-55