ICU Medical, Inc., a worldwide leader in the development, manufacture and sale of innovative medical devices used in infusion therapy and critical care applications, and Cerner today announced that Sheridan Memorial Hospital in Sheridan, Wyoming, successfully integrated ICU Medical’s LifeCare PCA™ 7.0 infusion system with Cerner Millennium®, Cerner’s core electronic health record (EHR) solution. This announcement marks the first time a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump has integrated with Sheridan Memorial through Cerner’s EHR technology.
Cerner’s CareAware Infusion Management™ solution connects the EHR to ICU Medical’s LifeCare PCA 7.0 infusion pumps and MedNet safety software to help assist clinicians in improving the safety and efficiency of the medication administration process.
Improving safety and efficiency of pain management is a critical issue for institutions across the country, and successfully integrating infusion devices with hospital EHRs presents next-generation benefits to patients and clinicians. At Sheridan Memorial Hospital, patients and clinicians will now benefit from this improvement in safely administering high-risk narcotics. For over 100 years, Sheridan Memorial has brought progressive programs and medicine, superior outcomes and cutting-edge technology to the patients and communities they serve.
“Because the LifeCare PCA 7.0 system allows integration to Cerner’s EHR, it will help us improve safety, clinical documentation and workflow efficiency,’’ said Charlotte Mather, chief nursing officer at Sheridan Memorial Hospital. “This integration also expands our ability to do alarm-forwarding with ICU Medical’s PCA devices, something we began late last year.”
ICU Medical’s LifeCare PCA 7.0 was the first PCA pump with integrated bar code identification of prefilled and pharmacy-filled drug vials, helping to reduce the potential for drug and concentration errors at the bedside. PCA infusions can be automatically programmed to the right patient using the physician’s order directly from the Cerner Millennium EHR. This process reduces the human variability associated with infusion administration and may further enhance safety where manual programming errors can still be made within the upper and lower drug library limits. Combining PCA and infusion documentation, which automatically charts doses given, helps clinicians make informed decisions on patient care and provides better visibility into the medication administration process.
“Empowering clinicians to more safely, efficiently and effectively utilize smart infusion pump technology is an important mission of ICU Medical,’’ said Dan Woolson, vice president and general manager of ICU Medical Infusion Systems. “We are proud to collaborate with Sheridan Memorial and Cerner to deliver technology that meets the evolving needs of clinicians in medication error prevention.”
ICU Medical’s MedNet safety software supports Alert Forwarding capability for LifeCare PCA 7.0, expanding Sheridan Memorial Hospital’s secondary alert functions. Through the integration of the CareAware Event Management™ secondary alerting solution with ICU Medical’s infusion system technology, Sheridan Memorial can route alerts from medical devices or the nurse call system to a clinician’s mobile devices, allowing caregivers to stay connected and flag issues to the right person at the right time.
“We are proud of the continued success we’ve seen at Sheridan Memorial with the expanding smart pump integration to support PCA pumps and documentation workflow,” said Bryce Turnbull, vice president of DeviceWorks, Cerner. “The integration of these technologies reflects Sheridan’s continued investment to deliver high-quality patient care and solidifies the strong relationship between Sheridan, Cerner and ICU Medical.”
