The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has formed a committee through the NCSL Foundation for State Legislatures Partners Project for Transforming Health Care through Technology. The committee is co-chaired by Senator Richard Moore, Massachusetts and Representative David Clark, Utah – with steering committee members from state legislatures and private partners including Reed Elsevier. The NCSL Legislative Summit was held in San Antonio, TX August 8-11 where the committee had a face-to-face meeting as well as went on a site visit showcasing Elsevier’s CPM Framework™ and Models with an electronic health record. University Health System (UHS) utilizes CPM as part of their clinical documentation to provide evidence-based care planning and clinical care coordination as well as support their Magnet Recognition.
The NCSL Committee members were welcomed by UHS Executive Leaders including George Hernandez Jr, President; Bill Phillips, VP/Chief Information Officer; and Nancy Ray, VP/Chief Nursing Officer. The focus of the meeting was to share information about UHS – as well as their technology and practice transformation journey. From there the committee split up into 3 groups, touring a Surgical Intensive Care Unit, a Transplant Unit, and a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where bedside nurses showed their electronic health record and spoke to the benefits of having evidence-based guidelines at their finger tips as well as plan and document individualized care for each patient and family. UHS uses Allscripts as their HIT vendor and their product Knowledge-Based Charting™ is a combination of CPM CarePoints™ (evidence-based content) within the Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Manager platform.
It is very important to educate those serving in healthcare policy roles as to the significance of not only health information technology, but also the significance of clinical decision support infrastructures and content, interdisciplinary coordination, and cultures that support patient-centered meaningful care. The NCSL committee focused on learning more about health information technology as a transformational tool and was extremely pleased with the visit – to read more about it please read the NCSL Press Release. The visit concluded with a photo on the UHS helipad in very HOT weather!
Special thanks to University Health System team members (George Hernandez Jr, Leni Kirkman, Bill Phillips, Nancy Ray, Evelyn Swenson-Britt, Susan Gerhardt, Rachel Rivas, Michael Payne, Ogla Giddens, Irene Lopez, Natalie Davis and Eva Balboa) for hosting this very significant site visit. I also would like to thank Caroline Carlson (NCSL), Beth Cooley (Reed Elsevier), Diane Hanson (Elsevier CPM Resource Center) and Diane Bradley (Allscripts) for supporting the event.
Cheers,
Michelle
