University Health Care System partners with PeraHealth to enhance physician-nurse communication, patient safety

CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- University Health Care System (UHCS) will access PeraHealth's real-time clinical surveillance software to enhance clinician communication and more quickly detect serious health issues.

"University takes great pride in insisting our patients have access to state-of-the-art technology that helps create a safer, higher quality and more efficient health care experience," said University Health Care System President & CEO James R. Davis. "With our use of PeraHealth software, we will continue to lead the way as the region's health resource. This is another example of University fulfilling our mission to improve the health of those we serve."

Powered by the Rothman Index™, a disease-agnostic universal score for predicting patient readmission and mortality risk, PeraHealth solutions offer a clear depiction of a patient's overall condition trended over time and can alert clinicians to subtle life-threatening health problems.
Rothman Index scores are automatically pulled and computed from any electronic health record (EHR) system, with no additional manual data entry required for nurses or other staff.

According to University's Vice President of Care Transformation Stephen Gooden, M.D., "We believe PeraHealth solutions will further promote collaboration among our care teams around the best ways to prioritize care services across shifts, units and departments."

University Health Care System is one of the largest and most comprehensive care providers in Georgia, serving a 25-county region in Georgia and South Carolina. Anchored by the 581-bed community, not-for-profit University Hospital, University has a long history of delivering the highest quality care in the region, to include heart, vascular, orthopaedic, spine and women's services.

"Care providers today are inundated with data, but many lack the resources to translate that data into meaningful information," said PeraHealth CEO Stephanie Alexander. "PeraHealth solutions make patient data actionable by alerting clinicians earlier to potential patient deterioration to facilitate conversations about the right place and time for treatment. We're thrilled to assist University Health Care System in improving the health of the communities the system serves."

Peer-reviewed research shows the Rothman Index helps clinicians detect declining patient conditions earlier with significantly fewer false positives, and reduce rates of unplanned readmissions.

Clinicians also use PeraHealth solutions:

• To remotely monitor patients across multiple care settings for preemptive rapid response team intervention.
• For chronic disease management to determine when to discharge patients and predict readmission risk.
• During daily interdisciplinary rounds to prioritize patient bedside visits for ICU optimization.
• To facilitate conversations and make recommendations about palliative care use.

About University Health Care System
By continuously responding to the needs of the community, University Health Care System has grown into one of the largest, most comprehensive health care providers in Georgia. University provides compassionate and skilled care through inpatient care, two extended care nursing facilities, home health, prompt care facilities and Brandon Wilde Life Care Community, recognized for excellence across the country. In addition to its flagship University Hospital founded in 1818 in Augusta, University opened the 25-bed University Hospital McDuffie in January 2015 to continue to offer a wide spectrum of medical and health services closer to home for the people of McDuffie County and surrounding communities. University providers deliver high-quality care at satellite medical campuses in Martinez, Evans, South Augusta and North Augusta in South Carolina. University's physicians, staff and Board of Directors share a strong commitment to safety and quality care. University is the only hospital in the Augusta region to earn the Magnet® designation for nursing excellence, and has been named the National Research Corporation® award winner in Overall Quality and Safety for 16 consecutive years. Healthgrades® consistently grades University with more five-star rankings than all area hospitals combined, and CareChex® ranks University a leader in multiple local and state categories, and ranked University 30th in the nation in patient safety. For more information about University, visit www.universityhealth.org.

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 nurses and other staff. The result is a predictive warning system that alerts 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 their 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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