Elsevier Addresses Today's Healthcare Information Crisis With a Renewed Focus on Improving Quality and Efficiency

PHILADELPHIA, March 1, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --

- At HIMSS 2010, Elsevier's Top Experts Will Present Strategic and Tactical Solutions to Help Providers Improve Healthcare Quality, Achieve Meaningful Use

Advancing healthcare quality to help improve patient outcomes and economic efficiency continues to be a primary focus in 2010 for Elsevier, the leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information. During HIMSS 2010 (Atlanta, GA, March 1-3), Elsevier Clinical Decision Support will feature solutions that directly impact the quality of care, including evidence-based clinical content and tools; interdisciplinary documentation, planning and guidelines; drug decision support; interactive skills and procedures; data mining and outcomes analysis; and eLearning.

Elsevier's Clinical Decision Support (CDS) leaders will present how its solutions can help clinicians, hospitals and healthcare systems improve care quality and achieve meaningful use of healthcare information and technology.

"Healthcare quality, safety and efficiency depend more and more on having the right information at the right time," said Dr. Jonathan Teich, Chief Medical Informatics Officer for Elsevier Health Sciences. "Elsevier is uniquely positioned to help confront today's healthcare issues because of our combination of broad, deep information content and multi-faceted tools that support nearly every part of the healthcare workflow. We start with the best evidence-based clinical knowledge and then craft our solutions to deliver highly relevant, actionable information to help providers manage patients through the entire care process."

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in its recent proposed definition of meaningful use, said that the healthcare industry would be best served by "achieving improvements in quality, safety and efficiency, focusing on decision support for national high priority conditions, patient access to self management tools, access to comprehensive patient data, and improving population health outcomes."

Keeping that in mind, three key Elsevier experts will discuss their perspectives on several CDS solutions at HIMSS 2010:

    - Dr. Jonathan Teich, CMIO - Clinical Decision Support: Dr.
      Teich will have presentations in Elsevier's booth (#6503 and 6509) as
      well as educational sessions in the Physicians' Symposium and the
      regular HIMSS program, exploring how usable, meaningful CDS can improve
      clinical care quality and reduce medical errors. Optimizing decision-
      making and improving care processes are two of the main promises of
      CDS, according to Dr. Teich, who speaks at the Elsevier booth on
      Monday, March 1, at 1:30 p.m.
    - Swati Abbott, President, MEDai - Predictive Analytics: Ms.
      Abbott of MEDai, an Elsevier company, will discuss how leveraging real-
      time clinical surveillance and predictive analytics can improve patient
      safety, clinical effectiveness and operational efficiencies. Hospitals
      can use analytics to prevent readmissions, to quickly and easily
      identify improvement opportunities, to monitor the effectiveness of
      corrective actions taken. Ms. Abbott speaks at the Elsevier booth on
      Tuesday, March 2, at 11 a.m.
    - Michelle Troseth, RN, MSN, EVP at CPM Resource Center -
      Practice and Content Interoperability - Ms. Troseth of CPM Resource
      Center, an Elsevier company, will speak about how hospitals can benefit
      from adopting a professional practice framework that encourages
      evidence-based practice and partnership throughout the organization.
      Providers need a common professional practice framework to plan and
      deliver coordinated patient care focused on quality and safety and
      address the needs of interdisciplinary providers, patients and
      families. Ms. Troseth will be presenting in Elsevier's booth on
      Tuesday, March 2 at 3 p.m.

"All of these perspectives are essential for helping clinicians and their healthcare institutions overcome the challenges healthcare providers face," said Chris Dillon, Managing Director for Clinical Decision Support at Elsevier Health Sciences. "With the proper implementation of a CDS program, measures of the health priorities defined by the meaningful use guidelines are more likely to meet quality targets and even improve over time."

By following CMS's lead and renewing its focus on care quality and efficiency, Elsevier will continue its efforts to deliver the finest evidence-based content, products and services that help them concentrate on improving care and outcomes.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com) and Cell (http://www.cell.com), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), Scopus (http://www.scopus.com), Reaxys (http://www.reaxys.com), MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com) and Nursing Consult (http://www.nursingconsult.com), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (http://www.scival.com) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (http://www.medai.com), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (http://www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

    Tom Reller, VP, Global Corporate Relations, Elsevier
    +1-215-239-3508
    [email protected]

SOURCE Elsevier