Frederick Memorial Hospital breaks new ground with MEDITECH and Picis custom integration achieving HIMSS Stage 7 Certification

Wakefield, MA, September 27, 2017 –Picis is pleased to announce a successful custom device integration with Frederick Memorial Hospital, allowing for them to receive HIMSS 7 Stage Certification. Frederick Memorial Hospital (FMH), Picis and MEDITECH worked together on a custom integration between Picis anesthesia software and MEDITECH 6.1.

The main driver for this project came from the staff on the units who needed to know what medications were given during a surgery which coincidentally matched up with a key requirement for the HIMSS Stage 7 certification. The HIMSS Stage 7 Certification acknowledges those hospitals that are using technology in a way that supports patient safety and clinical practices with one of the key requirements being medication availability electronic medication administration record (EMAR). System integration was the way for FMH to ensure medication administration activities were inclusive of the perioperative medication activities. This integration allows the inpatient clinicians access to medication history in near real-time supporting safe medication practice.

“Medication administration is a huge patient safety issue. With this integration, our goal was to ensure our patients, staff and administration are confident in our systems and process to provide safe care” said Cynthia Russell, Informatics Nurse Specialist for Perioperative Services at FMH. Cynthia worked with Lisa Nubgaard, Senior Application Analyst, to develop and lead the testing and requirements portion of this project.

The goal of the project was to allow clinicians within MEDITECH’s EMAR to view anesthesia and perioperative medication administration documented within the Picis application. FMH initially tried a discrete integration pulling information from their medication management system but when that failed then tried the MEDITECH and Picis system integration.  After the integration plan was approved by HIMSS, the FMH project team, Picis and MEDITECH set out to develop this integration.

The objective of the project was to allow a clinician to access the medications giving during the perioperative period of patient care via Picis Anesthesia Manager through a single point of access in the patient’s EMAR—while staying connected to the MEDITECH system. Through the hospital’s single sign-on system (SSO) a clinician could pull up a patient record, access Anesthesia Manager to view medications given before, during and immediately after surgery, then close out of the record to be back in the MEDITECH EMAR. The integration also allows clinicians to see medication allergies to ensure patients are given the correct medication types.

“It is awesome to see vendors working together, being flexible with other vendor’s software,” Cynthia Russell stated. “Picis and MEDITECH showed their dedication to helping clinicians improve patient care and safety.”

In order to meet the survey schedule by HIMSS, the Picis and MEDITECH teams had to meet a hard deadline for this project. The project lifecycle lasted 5 months—with an initial upgrade to the current MEDITECH version to get things started.

“FMH is only one of two hospitals in the whole state of Maryland with a HIMSS Stage 7 certification and the only MEDITECH 6.1 customer with this certification. The certification is a big accomplishment since only 4% of hospitals in the US have achieved HIMSS Stage 7,” commented Jean Havrilla, Director Medical Surgical and Behavioral Health Units, Nursing Resource and Transport at FMH who led the hospital team on the specifications for HIMSS Stage 7, and obtaining funding for coding and providing resources for the teams to work together.

The FMH team expressed that the most important takeaway from this project would be that hospitals shouldn’t be afraid to ask vendors for help. Cynthia added, “Our initial plan didn’t work with the discrete medication management integration so we asked Picis and MEDITECH for alternatives. Picis was willing to help with the integration and worked thoroughly with the MEDITECH team to ensure all systems were ready for the go-live.”

About Picis High Acuity Solutions

At Picis we’re focused on automating the entire perioperative continuum. Picis Clinical Solutions is a global provider of innovative information solutions that enable rapid and sustained delivery of clinical documentation, financial and operational results in surgical suites and intensive care units of the hospital. Picis Clinical Solutions offers an advanced suite of integrated products focused on these life-critical areas of the hospital where the patients are the most vulnerable, the care process is the most complex and an increasing majority of hospital costs and potential revenue are concentrated. Picis, a wholly owned subsidiary of N. Harris Computer Corporation, is headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Picis Clinical Solutions has licensed systems for use at more than 400 hospitals worldwide.