WellSpan Health, a regional health system based in south central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, and CareFusion have announced the successful implementation of the Alaris system across all four WellSpan hospitals. According to the two entities, WellSpan York Hospital has become the first facility to simultaneously go live with new infusion pumps and bidirectional interoperability between the infusion devices and the electronic health record (EHR).
According to WellSpan, the new integration connects the health system’s Alaris System smart infusion pumps, developed by CareFusion, with the hospital’s EHR. This interoperability solution is designed to help reduce the risk of intravenous (IV) medication programming errors at the patient bedside by enabling bidirectional communication between the infusion pump and the EHR for both syringe pumps and large volume infusions.
“WellSpan Health has been a leader in leveraging technology to promote patient safety,” said Kris O’Shea, vice president, Nursing Practice and Clinical Informatics, WellSpan Health. “Smart infusion pumps provide safety, but interoperability provides the next level of reliability. Not only does infusion pump integration to the EHR help improve patient safety, but it also documents all infusions back into the EHR, which saves a lot of time and administrative work for our nurses—time that is invested back into direct patient care.”
According to WellSpan, the Alaris system can be wirelessly prepopulated with infusion order parameters directly from the hospital’s EHR by scanning the barcodes on the patient’s ID band, the medication to be administered, and the smart pump. This method results in the programmed infusion order parameters being sent back into the patient’s medical record in near real-time and helps ensure accurate IV medication administration and documentation, and reduces opportunities for human error.
For more information about the new Alaris infusion devices and bidirectional interoperability with electronic health records (EHR), visit the WellSpan Health website, and the CareFusion website.
Photo credit: Carefusion
