SALT LAKE CITY -- Two Pennsylvania-based hospital organizations, Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) in Pittsburgh and its Suburban Campus in nearby Bellevue, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH) in Philadelphia, have selected real-time electronic surveillance and expert clinical decision support systems provided by TheraDoc®, a clinical informatics company headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT. This brings to 20 the number of Pennsylvania hospital facilities utilizing TheraDoc technology, adding to implementations at 14 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) facilities and the three-hospital group comprising the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) in Philadelphia.
TheraDoc technology leverages data from multiple sources within the hospital (ADT, microbiology, lab, pharmacy, radiology, surgery, scheduling and vitals monitoring) to power an automated surveillance solution that accurately identifies infections and their cause. The technology is widely embraced in Pennsylvania, which has mandated reporting of all types of hospital-acquired infections (HAI), as well as other related quality-of-care measures. Newly passed Pennsylvania Senate legislation also mandates electronic surveillance systems be compatible with the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a compliance TheraDoc meets by incorporating NHSN infection definitions into its system.
TheraDoc is also participating in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pilot project to automate the reporting of infection rates to NHSN. This will make submitting infection reports to NHSN push button simple for AGH and TJUH, as well as other TheraDoc customers in Pennsylvania and across the country. By supporting standards for infection surveillance, meeting state reporting requirements and eliminating duplicate entry, TheraDoc infection control software enables hospitals to focus on preventing infections while reducing the time it takes to perform these responsibilities.
According to Dr. Andrew Sahud, attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases; chairman of Infection, Prevention and Control Committee, and assistant professor of the Drexel University College of Medicine, AGH selected TheraDoc because it provides the best tools for focusing attention on reducing HAIs and improving patient safety.
TheraDoc technology is like a high-powered zoom lens, said Sahud. It is the ultimate tool for manipulating, interpreting and understanding infection data in our hospital, while also giving us the flexibility to focus on one item in the distance, see the entire horizon, or take a retrospective look back on where a trend began. It is very user-intuitive and provides clinicians with the ability to set parameters for individualized queries and antibiograms.
Cheryl Herbert, director of infection prevention at AGH adds, The success that we have achieved in tracking and reducing hospital-acquired infections over the past five years will be further enhanced by the new capability that this technology affords us. We greatly appreciate the fact that TheraDoc has never forgotten the need for clinical input on the data it delivers. Its dynamic technology provides clinicians with the real-time information they need without taking away their decision-making power. We also value that they successfully apply current CDC criteria to everything they do.
In our review of clinical decision support and infection control vendors, TheraDoc technology was by far the most-sophisticated and powerful program available, said Dr. Phyllis Flomenberg, attending physician in infectious diseases, associate professor of medicine, and director of TJUHs infection control department. Knowledge is empowerment and the more quickly real-time data can be provided, the better we can care for our patients. Without this technology, infection control is extremely labor intensive. TheraDoc merges all the sources of critical data and places it at our fingertips.
Rachel Sorokin, MD, associate chief medical officer at TJUH, explains further, At Jefferson, we have always diligently monitored hospital-acquired and community-acquired infections in every discipline within our institution. This effort, combined with PHC4 mandatory reporting of HAIs, has resulted in an enormous workload requiring a tremendous amount of personnel. TheraDoc technology not only monitors type, location and movement of an infection within a hospital freeing our infection control personnel to serve on the floor where we most need them to be, its infrastructure is also continuously upgraded and updated with the latest expert knowledge.
TheraDoc currently serves clients in 28 states ranging from community hospitals under 100 beds to integrated delivery networks (IDNs) with more than 3,700 beds.
 Source: TheraDoc, Inc.
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