CALGARY, Alberta, July 2, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cerner (Nasdaq:CERN), a leading provider of health care information technology, recently announced the winners of the 2014 Cerner Advancing Clinical Excellence (ACE) Awards during a ceremony in Calgary. Attended by more than 120 of the country's leading health care professionals, the Cerner ACE Awards honor clients that have positively impacted health care quality and efficiency across four categories.
1. Best Demonstration of Project Execution Award
Alexandra Hospital's Healthcare Undergoing Optimization (Hugo) Project was the recipient of Best Demonstration for Project Execution Award. Alexandra Hospital is committed to excellence in patient care; they worked on the Hugo project that embedded continuous quality improvement into their processes through standardization, automated technology and simplified work processes. They are a small organization that relies on other local health care facilities to manage their acute medical and surgical patients. Transfer of that care requires sharing pertinent information in a timely manner. Hugo is a multi-organizational project that enhances the electronic patient record and improves patient flow between these organizations. They were the first of 10 hospitals to go-live moving from HIMSS level 3 to HIMSS level 5. Alexandra Hospital is located in Ingersoll, ON.
2. Physician Improvement Award
North York General Hospital (NYGH) is the winner of the Physician Improvement Award for their ambulatory endoscopy project. NYGH had made significant advancements in the implementation of clinical systems in the inpatient arena but their ambulatory clinics remained on paper, causing fragmentation in the continuity of high-quality care. The provider embarked on a project to design and implement electronic physician documentation for ambulatory endoscopy. Their chief medical information officer was actively involved in the national standardization collaborative with Canada Health Infoway, the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology and the Canadian Partnership against Cancer. They achieved 93 percent adoption of Cerner PowerNotes™ by physicians in the first month alone. This reduced transcription costs by nearly $43,000 for endoscopy and reduced transcription time to 207 minutes. The turn-around time for endoscopy dictated reports reduced to one minute, down from an average of four to 12 hours. NYGH is located in Toronto.
3. Nursing Improvement Award
Toronto East General Hospital (TEGH) was the recipient of the ACE Nursing Improvement Award for implementing Cerner FetaLink® to give the Maternal Newborn department the ability to centrally monitor labouring mothers with reliable new fetal monitors. TEGH also integrated data from the fetal monitors directly into Cerner PowerChart®. This led to a decrease in duplicate documentation, reduction in the number of documentation errors, and increased the efficiency of the nurses. Another major benefit of the project is the ease of reporting Maternal Newborn information to the provincial database Birth Outcomes Registry Network (BORN). A customized extract decreases the need for a full-time position with manual entry and allows the provider to use the one full nursing position to provide care, rather than collect and reconcile data. Most importantly, the patient's chart is visible to all disciplines across the hospital, not just the Maternal Newborn department. The provider's goal was to move away from a "pregnancy-centric" documentation system to one that's "patient-centric". TEGH is located in Toronto.
4. Departmental Improvement Award
Calgary Laboratory Services was selected for the ACE Departmental Improvement Award. They provide mobile collection services to long-term care, supportive living and community patients with medical challenges preventing them from accessing a Patient Service Center for blood collections. Calgary Laboratory Services implemented Cerner's Automated Appointment™ reminder module saving a total of 25 hours that would have been spent manually calling each client the day before their scheduled collection. This allowed Calgary Laboratory Services to increase client volume without increasing staffing or incurring overtime. More than 95 percent of calls have been successful, which has enhanced client relationships, and provided a consistent message at a consistent time of day. Calgary Laboratory Services is located in Calgary, AB.
"Cerner is proud to align with these four outstanding health care facilities. Achieving results that improve the patient experience and boost the quality of health care is what we strive for," said Jim Shave, president, Cerner Canada. "Together, we will continue working toward better connectivity, more predictive intelligence and real-time optimal coordination for health care resources."
The ACE Awards ceremony was held during the annual Cerner Canada Regional User Group meeting, a two-day knowledge-sharing event designed for Cerner Canada East client health care leaders, clinicians and IT professionals. The event covered best practices and the latest health care developments in the region. More than 120 senior health care representatives attended from various organizations, hospitals and provinces.
About Cerner
Cerner's health information technologies connect people, information, and systems, at approximately 14,000 facilities worldwide. Recognized for innovation, Cerner solutions assist clinicians in making care decisions and enable organizations to manage the health of populations. The company provides clients with a wide range of in-house services, as well as an integrated clinical and financial system to help organizations manage revenue. Cerner's mission is to contribute to the systemic improvement of health care delivery and the health of communities. Nasdaq: CERN. For more information about Cerner, please visit www.cerner.ca, check out our blog at www.cerner.com/blog and connect with us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cerner, www.twitter.com/cernercanada and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cerner.
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Media Contact Dina Tewfik, Cerner Canada Marketing Manager , (514) 967-8880
