Providence Selects Sentri7 to Improve Quality Indicators by Enhancing Pharmacy Clinical Services

July 30, 2008 - PRLog -- Bellevue, Wash. -- Providence Health & Services has joined the growing list of hospitals that want to get the most out of existing IT investments by combining their laboratory, pharmacy and patient data through Sentri7 by Pharmacy OneSource. Providence purchased a Sentri7 subscription for all 26 of its member hospitals.

Implementation of a clinical decision support tool was a key part of the strategic plan for pharmacy in the PH&S system. The strategic plan includes a strategy to enhance the scope and quality of pharmacy clinical services and achieve goals of compliance with key quality indicators. Providence has established a "standard practice model" for pharmacy that includes the systematic review of patient therapy on a daily basis. A program to automate some of the functions required to gather information and detect potential drug related problems was necessary to help offset the increase in pharmacist resources needed in order to achieve the goals.

With Sentri7, clinicians have a single point of access to lab results, medication records and patient demographics, data that currently reside in different systems. Clinicians can write rules against the data to identify and flag at-risk patients.

Providence Health & Services undertook an in-depth, systematic, review of available decision support tools. The approach to Sentri7 was to establish two pilot sites and evaluate the program using pre-defined success criteria, before making the decision to implement the program in the rest of the system.

"Sentri7 was selected due to the unique approach of providing an efficient and effective method for screening the alerts and developing a work list of only those that warranted follow up," said Steve Pickette, System Manager of Pharmacy Clinical Services for Providence Health & Services. "We also had a very good history with Pharmacy OneSource in the implementation and use of the Quantifi documentation tool."

Sentri7 was implemented at two facilities, a 200-bed community hospital using the Meditech hospital information system and a 550-bed tertiary care center using McKesson's Horizon Meds Manager.  The criteria that were established for evaluating the pilots were:

100% accuracy of information as verified by comparison to reports generated by the hospital information system.
At least 25% of interventions documented originated from the Sentri7 program in categories related to the alerts.
An overall 10% increase in the number of interventions documented.
An average score of 4 or greater on a scale of 1-5 on evaluation of Sentri7 from the user standpoint.

Both pilots were very successful and met or exceeded all of the criteria.  For example, there was a 100% increase in the interventions documented using Quantifi at one facility and a 400% increase at the other.  Some of the increase was due to the program’s ability to facilitate documentation in the Quantifi program and some was due to the identification of opportunities that may have gone undetected.

Providence also evaluated the resources required to implement the program at the pilot sites in order to develop an accurate estimate of what would be needed for the rest of the system. The resources needed to implement the program were very minimal, especially relative to the impact of the program, with approximately 150 hours total needed including interface setup and training.

There have been no significant PH&S resources needed to support Sentri7 at the pilot sites during the first six months of use. The Sentri7 initiative was approved in May and Sentri7 is now being implemented in all facilities in all four regions of the PH&S system. Providence is on schedule to have Sentri7 and Quantifi running in all facilities, with the exception of two that have delays due to other priorities, by the end of September 2008.

"We are very excited that Providence  Health and Services has decided to purchase Sentri7 as a clinical decision support tool to implement its clinical practice model at all 26 member hospitals," said Tim Gibbons, President of Pharmacy OneSource.

For more information visit www.sentri7.com.

About Pharmacy OneSource (www.pharmacyonesource.com)
Pharmacy OneSource is healthcare’s #1 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. Our more than 50 innovative team members provide best-in-class, SaaS solutions to current and future challenges within health-systems worldwide. Our SaaS solutions contribute to swift and safe healthcare through earlier, easier and better access to data. More than 1,200 healthcare organizations worldwide utilize our HIPAA compliant web-based services: Accupedia, Amplifi, Quantifi, ScheduleRx, Sentri7, Simplifi 797, and UnitStock.

About Providence Health and Services (www.providence.org)
Providence Health & Services is a not-for-profit health system committed to providing a comprehensive array of services to meet the needs of communities across five states, including Alaska, Washington, Montana, Oregon and California.

Providence Health & Services includes 26 hospitals, more than 35 non-acute facilities, physician clinics, a health plan, a liberal arts university, a high school, approximately 45,000 employees and numerous other health, housing and educational services. The system office is located in Seattle, Washington.