The annual Siemens Inspired Healthcare Outcomes Challenge encourages healthcare organizations to share their success in applying health information technology, resulting in measurable improvements such as enhanced efficiency and support for clinical or financial objectives. All submissions are evaluated by experts from the Siemens Consultant Alliance Partners (CAP), consulting firms comprising industry leaders and trusted advisors to Siemens customers and prospects. This year’s “most inspired” facilities Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC), Denver Health and Hospital Authority, and PinnacleHealth System demonstrate how Siemens hospital information technology can help making significant improvements to healthcare processes.

CAMC’s first submission shows how the Soarian^® Clinicals workflow engine helped CAMC improve its coding process to more accurately reflect patients’ illnesses. CAMC increased its congestive heart failure (CHF) capture rate from 35.1 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009, contributing to an additional $500,000 in Medicare reimbursements. CAMC’s query acceptance rate by clinicians rose to 93.8 percent from 39 percent in the same period, increasing reimbursement for Medicare patients by $1.5 million. The hospital’s second submission demonstrates how Soarian Clinicals helped increase nutritional assessment consultations in the first half of 2007 to 527 per month on average, compared to a baseline of 100. With the improved workflow, the hospital is also able to avoid incremental clerical costs for reviewing charts of $60-90,000 annually.

Based on INVISION^® Clinicals*, Denver Health Medical Center chronicled the extensive adoption of computerized physician order entry (CPOE), with now more than 95 percent of lab and pharmacy orders entered via CPOE. Lab result turnaround time decreased by 55.6 percent, clinicians receive radiology results 61.6 percent more quickly, and medication is made available for administration 83.4 percent faster. Furthermore, Denver Health’s mandatory order sets for care of diabetic patients with ketoacidosis helped decrease ICU and hospital lengths of stay for diabetics by 21 percent and 29 percent, respectively. “We thought doctors were going to be a little reluctant to follow the cookbook,” said Rick Albert, MD, Denver Health Director of Medical Services. “But when they see that something works, they don’t resist it.”