Beaumont Health System Uses InterSystems HealthShare To Gain Actionable Insights On Hospital-Acquired Infections And Improve Patient Safety

HealthShare Strategic Informatics Platform Enables Beaumont to Automate CDC Reporting on Infections, Better Anticipate Patient Needs, and Qualify for Medicare Reimbursements

InterSystems Corporation, a global leader in software for connected care, announced that Beaumont Health System, a regional health system based in Michigan, has leveraged the InterSystems HealthShare strategic informatics platform to automate reporting on hospital-acquired infections and to qualify for reimbursements from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). In the process, Beaumont gained actionable new insight on infection prevention that will enable continuing improvements in patient safety.

To participate in the CMS program, Beaumont needed to extract data from various flat file reports and produce a customized CDA/CCD (Clinical Document Architecture/Continuity of Care Document) format, as required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prior to using HealthShare, Beaumont was unable to report this data to the CDC because the process was manual, inefficient, and arduous. Working closely with InterSystems, Beaumont was able to use HealthShare to create an efficient automated process for converting the files into the CDC's customized CDA/CCD format.

"We've always wanted to make use of this data, but didn't have the technology or resources to do it.  The data abstraction alone would have required 20 hours a week, and InterSystems took this off our plate," said Stephen Bean, IT Manager I at Beaumont.  "We were very happy with our collaboration with InterSystems. Their skilled support team helped us do something we never did before, and it would have taken us months to learn. Instead, we delivered ahead of schedule and easily met the CMS deadline."

"It's a new way of getting value from our data," said Kathleen DeSnyder, Manager, Quality and Patient Safety at Beaumont. "We previously ran monthly reports on hospital-acquired infections, but we have never been able to report on the community-acquired infections as well.  Because of what we learned about community-acquired infections, Beaumont is now better prepared for patients entering our healthcare system in terms of antibiotics inventory, isolation techniques, and the like – an unanticipated benefit that occurred only because of this project. Now we can truly use our data to make a difference in patient safety and intervention."

She added, "Participating in this program also allows us to compare our performance against national benchmarks—another valuable benefit."

Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, has been ranked among the U.S. News and World Report 100 Best Hospitals for 18 consecutive years.

"While healthcare has traditionally seen interoperability as a tactical problem to be addressed by IT, leaders such as Beaumont are leveraging clinical data and new strategic interoperability technologies to enhance population health and improve patient outcomes. By providing the ability to capture, share, understand and – importantly – act on infectious disease data, we are helping Beaumont achieve the promise of connected care," said Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems Vice President of Strategic Planning.

Information for Media Attending HIMSS 2013
InterSystems is exhibiting at HIMSS, Booth 2817, from March 3-7, 2013 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, LA. Visit our InterSystems HIMSS 2013 site to see our full schedule of presentations and learn more about the Key to Breakthroughs in Accountable Care. Media requests for interviews, photos and other information may be addressed to Catherine Marenghi, 781-715-7310 (m),catherine.marenghi@intersystems.com.

About InterSystems HealthShare
InterSystems HealthShare is a strategic platform for healthcare informatics. It enables organizations to capture and share all patient data, and provides real-time active analytics that drive informed action across a hospital network, community, region, or nation. HealthShare facilitates strategic interoperability, coordination of care, population health management, and community engagement. HealthShare successfully completed IHE Interoperability testing at the recent 2013 North American IHE Connectathon and will be featured at the HIMSS 2013 Interoperability Showcase, Session IS41.

About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is a global leader in software for connected care, with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and offices in 25 countries. InterSystems HealthShare is a strategic platform for healthcare informatics, enabling information exchange and active analytics across a hospital network, community, region or nation.  InterSystems CACHÉ is the world's most widely used database system in clinical applications. InterSystems Ensemble is a platform for rapid integration and the development of connectable applications. InterSystems' products are used by thousands of hospitals and laboratories worldwide, including all of the top ten hospitals on the Honor Roll of America's Best Hospitals as rated by U.S. News and World Report. For more information, visit InterSystems.com.

About Beaumont Health System
Beaumont Health System is a three-hospital regional health system with a total of 1,726 licensed beds, more than 14,000 full-time equivalent employees and nearly 3,100 physicians. In addition to its hospitals, Beaumont operates numerous community-based medical centers in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties, family practice and internal medicine practices, five nursing centers, a research institute, home care services and hospice. Beaumont is the exclusive clinical teaching site for the new Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine that welcomed its charter class on Aug. 8, 2011. For more information, visit www.beaumont.edu.