Valley Medical Center recently received a 2010 Impact Award for Enterprise Patient Informatics Solutions (EPIS) by Royal Philips Electronics, a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting.
VMC received the Emergin Impact Award for increasing both the average daily census and parent satisfaction in its 13-bed pediatric unit. The hospital’s winning presentation, titled “Improving Patient Safety and Parent Satisfaction in a Community Hospital/Pediatric Unit” showcased how the implementation of Emergin products has resulted in significant and positive impact on hospital operations.
Emergin is a fast, middleware software application that directly routes heart monitor and patient call system alarms to the patient’s caregiver and it lessensalleviates the need for a unit secretary or “middleman” answering a phone. At Valley one of the key uses for Emergin has been as an alarm tool that ensures critical information is communicated to the right person at the right time by utilizing the caregivers’ mobile phone. In Valley’s Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) the Philips system that monitors the patient’s heart rhythm is integrated with Emergin and in critical situations an alarm is sent from the monitor to the nurse’s phone for immediate response. The patient call system is integrated so the patient or family can simply press a call button that is routed directly to their nurse who receives the call with their mobile communication device and can immediately speak to the patient in their room. The Emergin system is also integrated into the emergency toilet pull cords in the patient bathrooms as well as the Code Blue and Staff Assist buttons throughout the departments. All of this means faster response times to address patient care issues and better patientstaff communications.
Presented at Royal Philips Electronics annual EPIS Users Group meeting, the 2010 Impact Awards covered four categories: the eICU Clinical Impact Award, the eICU Financial Impact Award, the Intellivue Clinical Information Portfolio Impact Award, and the Emergin Impact Award. Impact Award recipients are selected annually by a panel of healthcare leaders from the eICU Research Institute to recognize the effective implementation of Philips EPIS solutions to impact the quality and cost of care delivery.
