By Suzi Birz, principal, HiQ Analytics, LLC
In hospitals alone, health-care associated infections (HAIs) account for an estimated 2 million infections, 90,000 deaths and $4.5 billion in excess health care costs annually. In an effort to lower these statistics, SafetySurveillor™, a new Web-based solution from Premier, Inc., provides electronic surveillance to infection control professionals and clinical pharmacists.
“Infection prevention professionals use SafetySurveillor to quickly detect and facilitate timely interventions with actionable alerts, analysis and reports through automatic data collection and analytical routines that integrate patient, laboratory, surgery and pharmacy data,” said Angela Bivens, MSN, a senior clinical consultant with Premier. “Clinical pharmacists can optimize antimicrobial usage, enhance outcomes and reduce the costs associated with inappropriate or unnecessary usage.”
“SafetySurveillor provides several basic functionalities to assist infection preventionists and clinical pharmacists in their daily practice, including real-time notification and investigation support, investigation documentation and diverse reporting capabilities,” explained Bivens.
“The big change is in the timeliness and organization of the data,” explained Patricia Burns, RN, BSN, Infection Control Coordinator at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Edgewood, Kentucky. “The information is available and organized for action.”
“For instance, I have an alert set to notify me of any patient in the hospital with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),” explained Burns. “I can call or go to the floor and ensure the patient is in isolation and that contact precautions are in place.”
“It is exciting, because as soon as we implement the pharmacy component the clinical pharmacists will also be able to set alerts and stop searching through reams of paper,” added Burns. “For example, if an ordered medication for a patient does not match the culture result or if a narrow-spectrum antibiotic is indicated rather than a broad-spectrum, the system could send an actionable alert to the pharmacist which could result in increased effectiveness of the medication and decreased cost.”
The alerts for pharmacy include restricted agents, high-cost medication, drug combinations, length of therapy and lab results for organisms, resistance and bug-drug mismatches.
“Information is interfaced from existing hospital systems including patient admission, discharge and transfer, laboratory, pharmacy, surgery and soon radiology, which combine to present a comprehensive set of clinical data,” noted Bivens. “This information, along with built-in templates, allows the infection preventionist to document in the system the investigations and actions taken related to the alerts.”
This information can then be used to generate routine and ad hoc clinical and administrative reporting that includes antibiograms, exposure management, rate reports, trend analyses, on demand queries and committee, executive team and board reports and reports for Department of Health.
“The interventions from the alerts affect not only patient safety, but the safety of hospital staff and visitors,” added Burns. “Additionally, the alerts and ad hoc reporting allow rapid detection of clusters and outbreaks.”
“Use of the electronic surveillance system reduces the paper chase and affords these clinical practitioners time to get out on the floors,” added Bivens. “And, using the two pieces, infection control and pharmacy, together, means that there will start to be a cohesive approach to interventions that will result in a decrease in patient harm.”
“Being open to this new technology allows infection control practitioners and clinical pharmacists do their job better by taking advantage of the timeliness and organization of the alerts,” noted Burns.
More information available from Premier Inc.
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