Penn State Hershey Medical Center selects PeraHealth to improve clinician communication, patient care

CHARLOTTE, N.C., June 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center will use PeraHealth's real-time clinical surveillance software to improve clinician communication and more quickly detect subtle patient health problems.

Powered by the peer-reviewed Rothman Index™, a universal score for predicting patient readmission and mortality risk, PeraHealth's full suite of solutions will be accessed at the leading teaching and research hospital and at nationally-ranked Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital, where the Pediatric Rothman Index will be implemented.

"At Penn State Hershey Medical Center, we are dedicated to providing healthcare of the highest quality. The ability to put together patterns of subtle changes in lab values, vital signs, and physical assessments and detect clinical problems earlier in the course of disease will allow us to enhance our already robust care program," said Andrew Resnick, M.D., MBA, chief quality officer and associate professor of surgery at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. "We are committed to eliminating all preventable harm, and our investment in the Rothman Index demonstrates our commitment to ensuring optimal outcomes for the patients of central Pennsylvania and beyond."

PeraHealth software automatically pulls and computes data from all major electronic health record (EHR) systems, with no additional manual data entry required for nurses or other staff. The data is translated into a 0-100 Rothman Index score and presented in a clear graph that trends a patient's condition across any care setting.  

"It's common for subtle but serious health problems to go undetected, especially in pediatric populations," said PeraHealth CEO Stephanie Alexander. "PeraHealth solutions alert doctors and nurses earlier to these types of issues by clearly trending patient condition in real-time. We are honored to partner with Penn State Hershey to support their efforts to achieve the highest level of care quality, safety and value."

Clinicians also use PeraHealth solutions:

• To remotely monitor patients across multiple care settings for preemptive rapid response team intervention.
• For chronic disease management to help determine when to discharge patients.
• During daily interdisciplinary rounds to optimize ICU bed utilization.
• To facilitate conversations and make recommendations about the need for palliative care.

The Pediatric Rothman Index is now used at seven of the nation's leading children's hospitals representing 2,300 beds, 111,000 annual inpatient admissions and three million annual outpatient visits. Recent peer-review shows the Pediatric Rothman Index successfully predicted the likelihood of crisis events up to 24 hours before they occurred, and with favorable sensitivity and specificity.

About Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

Founded in 1963 through a gift from The Milton S. Hershey Foundation, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center is a leading academic medical center located in Hershey, Pa. The 551-bed Medical Center is a provider of high-level, patient-focused medical care. Annually the Medical Center admits more than 29,000 patients, accepts more than 911,000 outpatient visits, receives nearly 67,000 emergency room patients and performs more than 29,000 surgical procedures. The Medical Center campus includes Penn State College of Medicine (Penn State's medical school), Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, and Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital—the region's only children's hospital. The Medical Center campus is part of Penn State Hershey Health System, which also includes the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Penn State Hershey Rehabilitation Hospital, and other specialty facilities.

About PeraHealth
PeraHealth provides hospitals and health systems with a single solution for real-time clinical surveillance across all patient populations and care settings. Based on the peer-reviewed Rothman Index™, a universal score for predicting patient readmission and mortality risk over time, PeraHealth software can pull data from all major EHR systems with no added manual data entry for staff. The result is an earlier warning system alerting clinicians to the potential for subtle patient deterioration to help optimize ICU use, hardwire rapid response teams and enhance palliative care services. More than two million clinicians, patients and families have benefited from solutions from PeraHealth and Alive Sciences, its Sarasota, Fla. affiliate. For more information about Charlotte, N.C.-based PeraHealth, visit www.perahealth.com.

SOURCE PeraHealth

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