Ohio's University Hospitals Standardizes Obstetric Nursing Documentation via Unique PeriGen Design

CRANBURY, N.J., Feb. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- University Hospitals (UH) in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the nation's leading healthcare systems, will implement PeriGen's PeriCALM^® patented, FDA-cleared clinical decision support and fetal surveillance solution at two hospitals, UH MacDonald Women's Hospital in Cleveland and UH Geauga Medical Center in Geauga County. The PeriCALM deployment starting this month will entail a first-time build of PeriGen's obstetric (OB) nursing-specific content into UH's enterprise-wide and ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) solutions from Allscripts™. 

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UH MacDonald Women's Hospital, Ohio's only hospital dedicated to women's health including labor and delivery, and UH Geauga Medical Center, a 226-bed non-profit acute care facility, combined deliver more than 5,000 babies annually. UH MacDonald Women's Hospital, a national leader in the management of routine and complex pregnancies and births, has a comprehensive Maternal Fetal Care Center which is fully integrated with pediatric specialists at the adjacent UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. 

Together, these hospitals provide the highest level of care for both high-risk mothers and infants presenting with a wide range of neonatal conditions all in the same facility. Like thousands of hospitals and health systems across the country adapting to new models of care delivery, UH is standardizing its acute and ambulatory patient health information onto one EHR system to better coordinate care, deliver better outcomes and improve the provider-patient experience.

"We turned to PeriGen to help us fulfill our community commitment to higher quality, safer and accountable patient care," said Nancy Cossler, M.D., director of Quality at University Hospitals MacDonald Women's Hospital. "Through only one system interface we are able to standardize OB charting, documentation and best practices that support and guide our OB teams throughout our organization. This is especially critical for our large high-risk patient population as it helps manage the complex care we are able to provide these expectant women during their pregnancies."

According to Matthew Sappern, CEO of PeriGen, "We are excited to offer University Hospitals' OB physicians, nurses and clinicians an unprecedented way of using our trusted, expert OB solutions more easily to deliver safer care. Our seamless system integration solves the problem of multiple points of complex interfacing, making it easier for users to access critical data immediately at the bedside or other location at any time."

Continuing, Sappern noted, "We also applaud University Hospitals for being a client innovator through using our superior perinatal nursing content coupled with PeriCALM to standardize best practices onto one EHR system enterprise-wide. They've made a conscious effort to really change how all of their hospitals deliver care and have invested a lot of work bringing together a considerable body of OB knowledge in clinical best practices. We're proud that our tools supplement meeting UH's OB content and technology needs without incurring additional costs in order to achieve their mission of providing the very best care possible to mothers and their infants."   

About University Hospitals

University Hospitals, the second largest employer in Northeast Ohio, serves the needs of patients through an integrated network of hospitals, outpatient centers and primary care physicians in 16 counties. At the core of our health system is University Hospitals Case Medical Center, one of only 18 hospitals in the country to have been named to U.S. News & World Report's most exclusive rankings list: the Best Hospitals 2013-14 Honor Roll. The primary affiliate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, UH Case Medical Center is home to some of the most prestigious clinical and research centers of excellence in the nation and the world, including cancer, pediatrics, women's health, orthopedics and spine, radiology and radiation oncology, neurosurgery and neuroscience, cardiology and cardiovascular surgery, organ transplantation and human genetics. Its main campus includes the internationally celebrated UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, ranked among the top children's hospitals in the nation; UH MacDonald Women's Hospital, Ohio's only hospital for women; and UH Seidman Cancer Center, part of the NCI-designated Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University. UH Case Medical Center is the 2012 recipient of the American Hospital Association – McKesson Quest for Quality Prize for its leadership and innovation in quality improvement and safety. For more information, go to www.uhhospitals.org

About PeriGen, Inc.

PeriGen, Inc., is an innovative provider of fetal surveillance systems employing patented, pattern-recognition and obstetrics technologies that empower perinatal clinicians to make confident, real-time decisions about the mothers and babies in their care. PeriGen's customer-centric team of clinicians and technologists builds the most advanced systems available to augment obstetric decision-making and improve communications among the clinical team at the point of care, while supporting data flow between healthcare IT systems.  PeriGen offers the only FDA-cleared EFM pattern recognition system that is validated by the NICHD. Visit us at www.PeriGen.com.

SOURCE PeriGen