North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center, (North Shore-LIJ) is partnering with CPM to add evidence-based content to its EHR system and to facilitate the system’s transition to an integrated, enterprise-wide, evidence-based model of practice. Since 2007, North Shore and CPM have zeroed in on interdisciplinary clinical documentation by integrating data previously entered separately by disciplines as diverse as physical, occupational, speech and respiratory therapy, nursing, dietitians, social work, case management, child life and pastoral care.
“Because providers typically completed documentation within their own ‘siloed,’ paper-based documents, redundancy was a severe problem,” says Cathy Halloran, North Shore-LIJ’s Assistant Vice President for Clinical Systems. “Providers often asked patients the same series of questions over and over again, wasting valuable staff time and sometimes annoying patients and family members.”
Implementing a professional practice framework and care model has allowed North Shore-LIJ to move forward with evidence-based practice guidelines across nine institutions. Prior to the system’s involvement with CPMRC, each hospital had its own screens for patients at risk for pressure ulcers or falls. Using its EHR system, North Shore-LIJ was able to combine best practices for nine hospitals while allowing hospital clinics to develop their own post-anesthesia scoring systems and full-risk assessment programs.
“Our patients can be confident that wherever they go within this system, they will benefit from providers’ use of a single, consistent scale,” Halloran said. “Hospitals also benefit by using the evidence to determine how effectively they achieve outcomes, as well as the impact of the full-risk program on patients.”
While Halloran is pleased that North Shore-LIJ’s work now meets or surpasses the emerging meaningful use criteria, she sees the system’s real drivers as the patient, families and evidence-based care. “We‘re turning Northshore-LIJ into the best place to receive care and to give care,” she said. “No matter where a patient with heart failure goes within our system, we’re confident that he or she will receive the same high level of care.”
