News: Press Releases: 11-30-2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sparrow Health System Selects Wellogic Consult 3.0 Healthcare Portal Solution to Provide Unified Access to Patient Data Across the Enterprise

Patient-Centric View into Disparate Systems Across Premier Integrated Delivery Network Enables Real-time Access to Critical Information

Sparrow Health System serves a population of over one million people in the mid-Michigan area. The Wellogic solution will provide Sparrow's several thousand clinical users, including physicians, nurses, and other allied staff, with real-time access to unified, patient-centric clinical data from Sparrow's multiple hospital-based systems. Sparrow Health System includes four hospitals, 20 practices, nine pharmacies, and a durable medical equipment retailer. Anticipated benefits of the new Integrated Regional Health Information System, or IRHIS, include improved safety, security, and quality of patient care. In addition, both Sparrow and its patients will benefit from lower costs due to better, faster clinical decision-making, more standardized treatment protocols, and a shortened length of stay.

"We are very excited about the creation of IRHIS based on Wellogic's Consult solution," said Dr. Barry Schoenbart, Director of Clinical Informatics at Sparrow Health System. "In Sparrow's 107-year history, this will be the biggest change in the practice of medicine here since antibiotics. By allowing multiple providers to work with the same patient data at the same time, we achieve simultaneous problem solving. Additionally, with the clinical decision support capabilities of Consult and the immediate availability of all pertinent clinical information, our patients will benefit from having diagnostic and treatment decisions made in a more timely manner. For patients, this means improved safety and quality of care. For the clinicians, it means less time searching for patient information and more time for what really matters. We believe this solution will significantly improve physician, nurse and patient satisfaction at Sparrow Health System."

Sparrow's portal selection process involved more than a year of product evaluation by a team of nearly 50 physicians, administrators and clinical leaders from Sparrow Health System and the greater Lansing healthcare community. Clinical leaders felt that a partnership with Wellogic would be a better fit with Sparrow's mission and vision than would other vendors they evaluated. In addition to implementation of the system, the two organizations will collaborate on the creation of new features into Sparrow's IRHIS. "The Wellogic product proved to have superior integration capabilities with our legacy systems, as well as having the flexibility to easily integrate with new clinical systems," said Dr. Schoenbart. "This will permit us to implement a best of breed solution, one that eliminates the need to retrain end-users when departmental systems are updated or replaced."

Features of the Wellogic Consult solution include single sign-on for medical records browsing and management, rules driven alerts, secure messaging, transcription review and e-signature, and patient context-driven medical reference content.

"Consult provides Sparrow Health System with a patient-centric view of clinical information, regardless of where it resides in the delivery network," said Wellogic President and CEO Sumit Nagpal. "This improves the timeliness and safety of clinical decision making, increases collaboration between teams of providers and their patients, and effectively gets to the heart of clinical problem-solving. At Wellogic, we have a decade of experience in unifying clinical information and workflows within and between organizations, resulting in cost, efficiency, and safety benefits to providers and patients throughout the healthcare system. We believe that Wellogic's vision to improve the patient-doctor relationship through truly integrated, usable solutions complements Sparrow's mission to improve the health status of people by providing quality, compassionate, accessible and cost-effective care that is nationally recognized."

"We selected the Wellogic solution because of its Web-based, user-friendly interface, its comprehensive array of clinical functionality, and its proven community- and enterprise-wide scalability," said Dr. Schoenbart. "Additionally, it supports national patient safety goals with regard to medical error prevention. Wellogic is helping us to migrate to a fully electronic environment while still being able to leverage the technology investments we'd previously made. This project has changed our whole EMR strategic plan, which we anticipate will save Sparrow around $15 million."

About Wellogic

Wellogic provides clinical software solutions, solution frameworks, and information consulting services to healthcare organizations. Wellogic Consult, the company’s award-winning healthcare portal and electronic health record solution, unifies patient information and clinical workflows across hospital, payor, employer, pharmacy, and service provider systems, and provides a comprehensive patient record and clinical decision support at the point of care.

Consult is being used to enable anytime, anywhere access to clinical information and transactions across previously disconnected parties that span across healthcare systems, communities and geographic regions. These securely connected communities of doctors, other providers, patients, payors, service providers, and employers result in more timely decision making, enhanced patient safety and quality of care, reduced delivery costs, and improved outcomes and satisfaction. Built upon the Wellogic Platform, a modern health information exchange and solution framework adopted by leading HIS vendors, service providers, and provider organizations, Consult offers enterprise-class scalability, integration, and performance at an affordable price.