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The Mountain View, Calif.-based, nonprofit community hospital is known forpioneering programs in the areas of cardiac treatment, radiation oncology andnoninvasive surgery, and is a leading innovator in the use of computerizedphysician order entry (CPOE) and point-of-care technologies. To continue tomake breakthroughs in quality of care, El Camino Hospital recognized the needto implement technologies that leverage existing investments and also providea flexible foundation for current and future innovation.
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El Camino Hospital is using Microsoft Amalga to build a scorecard forevaluating hospital units and individual clinicians in 12 areas of patientcare, including cardiovascular, oncological, surgical and obstetricexcellence; care of the septic and critically ill patient; care of commonsevere illnesses; care of the patient with specific needs; patient safety andprocess control; hospital-acquired infections; patient experience; hospitalcomplications; and efficiency and throughput.
Before implementing Microsoft Amalga, the hospital was unable to integratedata from multiple systems to evaluate performance in each of the 12 areas.Microsoft Amalga will provide one view into all data across the hospital,enabling El Camino to identify areas of improvement, measure progress againstannual goals, and drive improvement in group and individual performance.
In addition, El Camino Hospital will use Microsoft Amalga to monitoradmitted patients in real time to identify gaps in quality of care. Forexample, the application will assist bedside clinicians with improvingclinical care and will prevent gaps in care for such specific diseases aspneumonia or heart disease.
"Achieving the highest standards in patient care is the single mostimportant goal of El Camino Hospital," said Eric Pifer, M.D., chief medicalinformation officer at El Camino Hospital. "But we cannot reach that goalwithout the ability to measure our progress against specific qualitystandards. Amalga allows us to quickly collect, view and analyze data of anytype, giving us unprecedented insight into the hospital's performance andgreater opportunity to innovate for improved quality."
El Camino Hospital also will use the Microsoft Amalga software to improveoperations and throughput when it moves into a new acute care facility in July2009. Within the larger facility, Microsoft Corp. and El Camino Hospital willbuild on Amalga to collect and display real-time data on patients movingthrough the hospital, giving everyone -- including administrators, bedplacement supervisors, emergency medicine staff, critical care staff andoperating room staff -- the ability to improve the quality, speed andefficiency of their operations. Using Microsoft Amalga, El Camino Hospitalwill be able to identify patients' physical locations in the facility in realtime while simultaneously looking at staffing levels and preventing potentialbottlenecks.
"El Camino Hospital holds itself to the highest standards in patientsafety and quality of care, and has recognized that improvement in these areasmeans investing in flexible, innovative and intelligent health solutions,"said Steve Shihadeh, vice president, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. "Amalgawill allow El Camino Hospital to take a holistic ap
