ATLANTA--()--Comanche County Memorial Hospital (CCMH), located in Lawton, Okla., recently selected a wide range of McKesson technology and services as part of a $13 million agreement to enhance medication safety and create a “paperless” electronic health record (EHR) that spans both inpatient and outpatient settings across the community. The goal is to create a single, secure EHR flowing across hospital departments and local physician offices enabling quicker access to complete and consistent patient information, including test results, encounter notes and diagnostic images in support of enhanced patient safety and clinical excellence.
“Comanche County Memorial Hospital exemplifies the central role hospitals play in local care delivery systems”
Under terms of the multi-phase initiative, CCMH will deploy a combination of the Horizon Clinicals® suite of solutions, along with resource management systems and information technology services. The hospital plans to leverage McKesson’s solutions to reduce administrative costs, enhance and automate healthcare delivery processes within the hospital, and bring together patient information into a single electronic format. Central to CCMH’s initiative is McKesson’s complete ambulatory EHR solution, Horizon Ambulatory Care™, enabling the hospital to partner with participating local physicians to create a single, secure EHR that supports enhanced collaboration and decision-making throughout the care community.
“We’re excited about going paperless and connecting to local physician offices though McKesson’s technology,” said Randy Segler, chief executive officer for CCMH. “This agreement enables us to leverage our existing IT investment to connect with the physicians in our community in support of promoting the best patient outcomes. This aspect to the project was a significant factor in our selection process and our local physicians are really looking forward to the roll-out of these applications.”
The new agreement extends CCMH’s existing partnership with McKesson, which has supported the hospital in fully automating its medication inventory management and tracking – from the loading dock to the patient’s bedside, in support of an end-to-end medication safety strategy. CCMH recently went live on a combination of the company’s information, automation and scanning technologies, including ROBOT-Rx™, the centralized robotic drug dispensing system that automates the storage, dispensing, returning and crediting of bar-coded unit doses of inpatient medications.
Future plans call for CCMH to deploy a combination of McKesson’s clinical, clinical analytics and financial administration solutions to gain insight into process improvement opportunities and to extend the electronic health record into the surgical, radiology and lab departments. In addition, physician portal technology will enable secure, Web-based access to patient information regardless of the physician’s location – in the hospital, the office, at home or elsewhere.
In a latter phase of the clinical initiative, CCMH will deploy Horizon Expert Orders™, McKesson’s solution for clinical decision support and physician order entry. The application provides physicians and other clinicians with advanced decision support based on the role of the clinician, the patient’s condition and evidence-based clinical knowledge.
Once the new clinical solution project is complete, CCMH patient medication orders will be electronically submitted by physicians, automatically filled by the robot, and then barcode-scanned at the patient’s bedside before being administered. Bedside barcode scanning technology helps to ensure the five “rights” of medication administration – right medication, right patient, right dose at the right time via the right route.
CCMH also has elected to address removing the complexity and confusion from the patient’s medical billing process by deploying McKesson’s online billing solution. PatientCompass™ enables patients to view and pay a single, customized bill and to access updated financial account and insurance information for both hospital and physician visits via established Web sites.
To support its unprecedented investment in advanced information technology (IT), CCMH signed a seven-year outsourcing contract that makes McKesson responsible for CCMH’s IT department. The move will enable CCMH to harness McKesson’s expertise with its own applications and third-party systems.
“Comanche County Memorial Hospital exemplifies the central role hospitals play in local care delivery systems,” said Duncan James, group president, Health Systems Solutions, McKesson Provider Technologies. “McKesson is honored to have the opportunity to partner with them and to demonstrate how the use of our combined solutions and services can make a positive difference in better and safer care in their community. We are uniquely positioned to provide solutions that address all aspects of the care process, and we’re proud to be their selected partner for this initiative.”
About Comanche County Memorial Hospital
Comanche County Memorial Hospital is a 283-bed hospital and integrated delivery system, with over 1700 employees and a network of more than 150 physicians. CCMH provides a wide array of services to the southwest quadrant of the state of Oklahoma and has been recognized as a health care leader in the state for many of its services and programs.
About McKesson Corporation
McKesson Corporation, currently ranked 18th on the FORTUNE 500, is a healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes and improving the quality and safety of patient care. Over the course of its 174-year history, San Francisco-based McKesson has grown to provide pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management across the spectrum of care; healthcare information technology for hospitals, physicians, homecare and payors; hospital and retail pharmacy automation; and services for manufacturers and payors designed to improve outcomes for patients. For more information, visit us at http://www.McKesson.com.
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