This really impressed me, as Duke is a renown medical facility:
Duke University Medical Center and Health System Implements APACHE III Critical Care Series TM
McLean, VA -- March 31, 1998 -- APACHE Medical Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMSI) today announced that Duke University Medical Center and Health System has purchased the APACHE III Critical Care Series as a key component of its system-wide information strategy.
"Our partnership with APACHE is extremely important and will us assist us significantly in our mission to deliver the best patient outcomes cost-efficiently within Adult Critical Care Services," said Dr. William Fulkerson, Medical Director for Critical Care Services at Duke. "APACHE allows us to accurately adjust for severity and compare results when examining our outcomes and practice. Combining APACHE with our other accounting and resource tracking tools will help us identify and promote the best practice for our patients."
Duke University Medical Center and Health System, staffing 850 beds, is an international leader in patient care, medical education and research. Recently named by US News and World Report as one of the nation's best hospitals (fourth in the country), Duke Medical Center serves as a major referral hospital in the South and Eastern regions of the U.S. The APACHE critical care system will be implemented first in the medical and surgical intensive care units (32 beds). Subsequent implementation will add the neuroscience, cardiothoracic and coronary care units, with APACHE products ultimately supporting patient care in 84 adult intensive care beds.
"The APACHE III Critical Care Series is a very powerful tool that will assist Duke Critical Care Services in emphasizing quality patient outcomes and efficient operations. Integrating the Discover+ and Voyager+ modules, through HL7 messaging, within our clinical and financial informatics infrastructure will create a tremendous resource for clinicians and operations personnel across our system," according to Landen Bain, Duke's Chief Information Officer.
APACHE Medical Systems, Inc. is the recognized leader in the development of risk-adjustment models, clinical decision support tools and quality improvement programs forthe care of high-risk, high-cost patients. The Company's products and services enable health systems, hospitals and providers to apply an evidence-based approach to achieve clinical performance excellence and compete effectively under managed care.
The APACHE III Critical Care Series products provide risk-adjusted hospital and health system performance data, comparison to Best Demonstrated practices and norms, as well as prognostic information at the individual patient level. This information is essential for hospitals to identify priorities for quality improvement, measure the results of these efforts and also assists in daily patient care management. The system includes two main modules. Voyager+ provides retrospective analysis, while the Discover+ module offers concurrent and predictive information in support of day-to-day patient care decisions, including at the bedside. All Critical Care Series products are PC-based within a client-server architecture, and are fully Year 2000 ready.
Well known internationally for the APACHE III methodology for critical care, APACHE's programs are today helping providers to better manage the clinical, financial and patient satisfaction outcomes of high-risk, high-cost patients in critical, acute, cardiovascular, HIV/AIDS and sub-acute care.
Both APACHE's Critical Care Series and Acute Care Voyager+ products are accepted by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations for reporting under the "ORYX" performance measurement initiative. |
