Springhill Medical Center Weathers the Storm with Sunrise Emergency Care™

Springhill Medical Center needed to automate manual processes in its busy, overcrowded Emergency Department, where board-certified emergency physicians treat approximately 34,000 patients annually. The medical center needed a system that would meet the unique needs of its ED clinicians, who must make decisions quickly and keep track of several patients concurrently in varying stages of care.

In October 2004, Springhill Medical Center activated Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager™'s, Sunrise Acute Care™ and Sunrise Emergency Care modules, which are fully integrated and share a common architecture and clinical data repository. This integration provides complete patient information to clinicians at the point of care and across the care continuum to help Springhill Medical Center become a truly connected enterprise.

“We wanted a system that would be accepted by physicians, provide evidence-based practice guidelines, streamline workflow, and integrate with current hospital systems,” said Pam Shedd, project manager responsible for clinical information systems at Springhill Medical Center. “Sunrise Emergency Care met our criteria.”

Springhill’s emergency clinicians use Sunrise Emergency Care to improve efficiencies at every stage of the care process. Once a patient is “quick-registered” in the ADT (admissions, discharge, transfer) system, Sunrise Emergency Care automatically populates the department’s electronic Display Board with all documented patient information. This gives the ED staff a complete, real-time view of every patient waiting for testing, diagnosis or treatment. A red flag on the Display Board alerts nurses of orders, and color-coded columns make it easy to see which patients need immediate attention.

“Nurses can now check the status of every patient, prioritize bed assignments and handle physician orders and medications quickly and accurately,” said Jeff Triboulet, director of ED Nursing at Springhill.

ED physicians are continually finding new ways to use the power and flexibility of the Eclipsys solution to streamline workflows, customizing columns on the Display Board with visual cues for lab orders and reconfiguring the structured notes to suit their individual preferences.

Dependability in Extreme Circumstances
Hurricane Ivan ripped through the area in September 2004 and delayed Springhill Medical Center's "big-bang" activation of Sunrise Emergency Care and Sunrise Acute Care by three weeks.

In August 2005, less than one year later, Hurricane Katrina ravaged Gulf communities from New Orleans to Mobile. For two days after the storm, the Springhill ED treated nearly 200 patients a day — twice its normal volume. “At any given time, there were 70 patients on the Display Board,” said Shedd. “Sunrise Emergency Care helped our doctors handle the high volume. The Eclipsys systems did not go down during Katrina, and I was even able to connect from home. We did not miss a beat.”

The Benefits
Sunrise Emergency Care has enabled the ED staff at Springhill Medical Center to streamline workflows, substantially reduce patient wait times and improve care. Successful integration of Sunrise Emergency Care with the legacy ADT system enables clinicians to document patient care and generate orders immediately with minimal patient information.

Springhill Medical Center has been able to reduce patient wait times by 30 minutes and overall length of stay by 60 minutes. “The physicians pay attention to the Display Board to see how long it’s taking and try to move patients through more quickly,” Shedd said. “They like the fact that they can look up at the Display Board and see when their labs are back or radiology is complete.”

Patient throughput increased by 15 percent in the first eight months after installation, averaging close to 100 patients a day. “The order sets in Sunrise Emergency Care have enabled me to see two to three more patients per shift,” said Springhill ED physician Darren Waters, MD. “My billing rates have increased and I’m able to focus on practicing medicine instead of the computer system.”

Most importantly, physician utilization of Sunrise Emergency Care has reached 100 percent after quick adoption right from the start. Within three months of going live with Sunrise Emergency Care, Springhill’s physicians were entering 60 percent of orders; after 12 months, they were placing 85 percent of orders directly in Sunrise Emergency Care.