SUNY Downstate Rolls Out Electronic Health Record System
Mar 17, 2008
Centralized Patient Information Enhances Patient Care, Facilitates Operations, Improves Research
Brooklyn, NY - SUNY Downstate Medical Center has begun a multi-year journey to deploy a sophisticated Electronic Health Record (EHR) to enhance patient care and safety, facilitate clinical research, and optimize operations for University Hospital of Brooklyn (UHB) and its community. Recently, UHB went live with Phase One of the project, SUNY HealthBridge, with a highly successful rollout.
SUNY HealthBridge is employing the Eclipsys Sunrise clinical suite of applications to achieve these goals. The suite includes:
- Computerized Physician Order Entry – allows physicians and other licensed practitioners to enter patient medication orders directly into the system. The system’s sophisticated logic evaluates orders for potential allergies and interactions with other medications, and checks for duplicates, thereby reducing the risk of medication errors. It also eases compliance with regulatory and national patience safety goals.
- Sunrise Pharmacy – this module tracks all medication orders, including intravenous drips. Pharmacists can verify medication orders to ensure safe and timely release of medications to the UHB nursing staff. UHB expects to exceed the Institute for Safe Education Practice’s goals for medication safety.
- Knowledge-Based Medication Administration – facilitates the accurate and timely documentation of a patient’s medication administration record.
When fully integrated, SUNY HealthBridge will be the central source of patient information. Using its structured flow sheets, Downstate practitioners will be able to electronically document all aspects of patient care, including clinical laboratory and radiology results. The information will be instantly accessible to many users simultaneously and from any location with an internet connection. Thus, all members of UHB’s clinical community will have complete, timely, accurate, and secure access to their patients’ information, whether they are in the hospital, in their office, or at home.
SUNY HealthBridge is a twenty-first century tool that allows Downstate’s physicians, nurses, and other clinicians to make the already outstanding care that they deliver even more stellar. Coupling this powerful technology with process improvements and expanded use of evidence based medicine underscores Downstate’s commitment to being a leader in patient-centered health care, patient safety, and clinical research.
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About SUNY Downstate Medical Center
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, founded in 1860, was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient’s bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate Medical Center comprises a College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Health Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and a multifaceted biotechnology initiative including the Downstate Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT for early-stage and more mature companies, respectively.
SUNY Downstate ranks twelfth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school.