Henry Ford Hospital Selects TheraDoc for Infection Prevention & Antimicrobial Management
SALT LAKE CITY, June 4, 2009 – Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit has selected TheraDoc's unique patient safety surveillance and clinical decision support technology as part of its programs to combat healthcare-acquired infections and drug-resistant infectious diseases in the hospital and surrounding community.
Henry Ford Hospital pharmacists and infection prevention practitioners will use the TheraDoc Infection Control Assistant® for hospital-wide infection surveillance and reporting and the Antibiotic Assistant® for individual patient-based infection management and antimicrobial stewardship.
Suboptimal use of antibiotics has contributed to an alarming rise in resistant infectious diseases, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 70 percent of bacteria that cause healthcare-acquired infections are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used to treat them. Antimicrobial stewardship plays a critical role in fighting antibiotic resistance by helping to ensure appropriate drug selection, dosing, and duration to cure infections, while minimizing toxicity and conditions for emergence of resistant bacterial strains.
According to Ed Szandzik, R.Ph., M.B.A., director of pharmacy, Henry Ford Hospital, infectious disease prevention is a top priority at the hospital. "TheraDoc will be an integral component of our antimicrobial stewardship service and infection prevention efforts at Henry Ford Hospital," he said. "The system will help automate the monitoring for infections and antibiotic use, allowing staff to spend less time sorting through data and more time performing interventions and educating staff about best practices."
Rachel Chambers, Pharm.D., B.C.P.S., antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist at Henry Ford, said hospitals are on the front lines in the battle against drug-resistant infectious diseases. "We selected TheraDoc in large part because of its specific focus on and capabilities in antibiotic stewardship," Chambers said. "We also will benefit from access to TheraDoc's user group-collaborating with leading clinicians across the country on ideas and best practices will be extremely beneficial."
According to Stanley Pestotnik, M.S., R.Ph., TheraDoc's co-founder, president, and chief executive officer, the company is proud to partner with Henry Ford Hospital in its leading efforts against healthcare-acquired infections and antibiotic resistance. "Like Henry Ford Hospital, we are committed to helping clinicians improve patient safety and achieve optimal outcomes," Pestotnik said. "TheraDoc technology takes the torrent of clinical data from a variety of hospital sources, transforms it into evidence-based knowledge, and delivers it to the right clinicians at the right time to help them positively impact patient care."
TheraDoc's Infection Control Assistant and Antibiotic Assistant work in conjunction with the company's core technology-the patented Expert System Platform®-which automatically receives and standardizes patient data from multiple hospital information sources. With the Expert System Platform as the "engine," TheraDoc offers a suite of Knowledge Modules that integrate patient data with clinical guidelines, providing timely, actionable recommendations on a broad range of patient safety issues faced by hospitals today.
About Henry Ford Hospital and Health System
Henry Ford Hospital is a 903-bed tertiary care hospital, education, and research complex located in Detroit's New Center area. The hospital is a multi-organ transplantation center and Level 1 trauma center and is part of the Henry Ford Health System. The Henry Ford Health System, one of the country's largest healthcare systems, integrates primary and specialty care with research and education. It includes the 1,100-member Henry Ford Medical Group, the 500,000-member Health Alliance Plan, 27 primary care centers, and many other health-related entities located throughout southeastern Michigan. For more information, visit www.henryford.com.
About TheraDoc
Founded in 1999, TheraDoc is a clinical informatics company dedicated to improving the quality, safety, and efficiency 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. TheraDoc's leadership in medical informatics standards enables the exchange and use of information between disparate health information systems. The company's 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.
