Case study: CA hospital uses IT to find high-risk patients

If a hospital can identify its high-risk patients early in the process and act accordingly, it can improve their outcomes. That, at least, is the theory behind the new IT initiative at Mercy Merced Medical Center, a Merced, CA-based system that is part of the Catholic Healthcare West system. Mercy Merced is working with Clinical Xpert CareFocus, a product that gives clinicians access to patient data on their mobile devices, to identify higher-risk patients on the fly.

The software, developed by Ann Arbor, MI-based Thomson Reuters, lets clinicians build clinical profiles that sift out high-risk patients based on those patients' medications, labs, vital signs, diagnoses, observations, active orders and even their demographics. If clinicians can find high-risk patients before they go critical, patients will have lower mortality rates, shorter lengths of stay and lower costs from treating complications, executives say. For example, using such indicators, Mercy Merced might identify an early-stage sepsis patient before he or she faces risk of serious harm or death, notes chief medical office Robert Streeter, MD.

To learn more about this initiative:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece
- read the Thomson Reuters press release