TheraDoc Helps Memorial Healthcare System Achieve 90 Percent Compliance with Pediatric Asthma Performance Core Measure
SALT LAKE CITY, March 10, 2009 – Florida's Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital is at the forefront in meeting new quality initiatives for pediatric asthma, thanks to a team approach and aided by tools from TheraDoc®, a clinical informatics pioneer that has been helping hospitals leverage information technology to improve care for more than 10 years. The team at Memorial Healthcare System's Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital (JDCH) is using the TheraDoc EZ Alerts Assistant® to identify pediatric asthma patients based on prescription medication data as a first step in implementing a new Joint Commission core measure for providing pediatric asthma home management care plans to patients and caregivers-achieving a 90 percent compliance rate.
A home care plan is vital to improving outcomes for asthma-the most common chronic disease in children and one of the most frequent reasons for hospital admissions and readmissions. It is one of three Children's Asthma Care core measures created by the Joint Commission as part of broader quality and public reporting initiatives. While the first two measures, which focus on providing appropriate medications, typically have high levels of compliance, meeting the more complex and detailed home management plan requirement presents significant challenges for hospitals. The plan must outline follow-up physician visits, medications, steps to manage asthma attacks, and environmental triggers, among other details.
According to Lucille Fasone, MPH, RRT, respiratory manager at JDCH, the hospital identified a need for a tracking system that could capture children admitted with a diagnosis of asthma, as well as those admitted with other diagnoses or symptoms identifying them as asthma patients. Fasone said short hospital stays require quick identification of patients to allow time for the team to implement the home care plan.
As a result, the hospital turned to TheraDoc, which has been used at the facility for more than a year for infection prevention and medication safety applications, to create reliable EZ Alerts flagging all patients ages 2¿17 prescribed steroids and bronchodilators. While pediatric asthma core measures are required only for freestanding hospitals, JDCH adopted the initiatives based on its desire to be at the forefront of quality patient care and now is in the top 10 percentile in compliance for all three measures.
"Using our existing TheraDoc platform, we were able to easily configure alerts based on medication and hospital admission diagnosis data," Fasone said. "TheraDoc has helped us streamline the process of identifying pediatric asthma patients so that we can be sure they receive the best quality care."
TheraDoc co-founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer Stan Pestotnik said, "Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital's success with these quality initiatives is a terrific example of the versatility of the TheraDoc Expert System Platform®, which provides clinicians with real-time tools to address a range of quality and patient safety challenges that arise in healthcare every day. We are honored by the trust and confidence demonstrated by the hospital's team in using TheraDoc for an easy-to-configure alert system to help them meet the pediatric asthma requirements."
TheraDoc's core technology is its patented Expert System Platform, which automatically receives and standardizes patient data from multiple hospital information sources. The EZ Alerts Assistant is part of the clinical tools in the platform that complement a suite of unique software products that also includes the Infection Control Assistant®, Antibiotic Assistant®, ADE Assistant®, and Clinical Alerts Assistant®.
Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital
Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital is part of the Memorial Healthcare System. It is a patient and family-centered care facility that meets the complex needs of children by providing a comprehensive scope of inpatient and outpatient pediatric services supervised by the largest diversity of board-certified specialists in the region. The hospital's mission is to provide high-quality healthcare services to our patients, regardless of their ability to pay, with the goal of improving the health status of the community we serve. As an advocate for children's healthcare and related causes, Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital offers community education, child safety programs and the Conine Clubhouse, a home away from home for families of sick children. For more information, visit www.jdch.com.
About TheraDoc
Founded in 1999, TheraDoc is a clinical informatics company dedicated to improving the quality, efficiency, and safety of patient care through enhanced clinical decision making. The company provides innovative products that improve clinical and financial outcomes for a range of provider and payer organizations, including some of the most respected healthcare institutions in the country such as Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health, and Emory Healthcare. The company's leadership in medical informatics standards enables interoperability with disparate health information systems. Its founders and core medical informatics team are internationally recognized for their pioneering and continuing work in clinical decision support design and development, which spans two decades. For more information, visit www.theradoc.com.
