Siemens Innovations has officially come to an end. My time in Philadelphia was good, but I will be happy to get home to the “dry heat”. The information I picked up was very valuable and I made some great contacts. I’m excited to get back to work and see what damage I can cause with my newly acquired knowledge.
As I wrap up my time here at Innovations ’09 a few thoughts come to mind:
Read more…
I spent the day attending the following educational sessions:
Where did My Mumps Job Scheduler (MJS) Go? – This was a pretty basic “how-to” session covering the new job scheduler, Cache, used in the latest version of the pharmacy system. Boring, but helpful.
Integrating Siemens Pharmacy to Maximize the Pharmacist Role – This was the most interesting presentation of the day, by far. Yakima Valley Memorial hospital is located in Yakima, Washington. Their pharmacy department is clinically solid and technologically advanced. They make extensive use of various custom pharmacy system reports to monitor antibiotic therapy, follow patients with poor glycemic control, and follow-up on patients with questionable orders. In addition, Yakima is in the process of writing advanced rules against their pharmacy system to track patients receiving warfarin therapy with no INR within the previous 24 hours. The warfarin monitoring is necessary to meet National Patient Safety Goal 3E. Much of the information is practical and can be reproduced at my facility.
Hitting the Mark with MAK! – Everyone wants to learn more about MAK, Siemens BCMA solution, and there have been presentations on just about every aspect of the system. This was no exception as the entire presentation was on how to develop a project plan for MAK implementation. This one nearly put me to sleep.
Leveraging MAK/MAR Integration to Achieve Increased Operational Efficiency – Centra State Healthcare System has done some pretty amazing things with their MAK data and the electronic medication administration record (MAR) found in Soarian. Soarian is Siemens system for collecting and displaying clinical information such as labs, allergies, patient assessments, physician notes, etc. Centra managed to create an integrated solution that offers physicians a one-stop-shop for clinical information as well as previous, current, and future medication administration. I was impressed. It appears I have a little reading to do when I get home.
I spent most of the afternoon talking with other pharmacists about computerized provider order entry (CPOE) and pharmacy automation. One pharmacist from CaroMont Health in Gastonia, NC was particularly interesting as his facility uses almost the exact same setup as ours; Siemens Pharmacy, Pyxis, and Talyst automation. He and I shared quite a bit of information. The time spent talking with other pharmacists was very valuable, possibley more valuable than all the presentations combined.
Tomorrow is the final day of Innovations ‘09 with more of the same on my agenda. Sessions on my radar for tomorrow include: Extending Patient Safety with MAK Beyond the Acute Inpatient Setting, Building the Bridge between MAK and Soarian, and Raising the Bar for Patient Safety. After that, it will be time to pack up and head for the airport; until then.
I just finished my last session of the day here in Philadelphia, and overall I would have to say it was a productive one.
My first session today was an update on various future enhancements to both the Siemens Pharmacy System and their barcode medication administration system (BCMA), fondly referred to as MAK. The future enhancements bring much needed functionality to a system that, in my opinion, wasn’t ready for prime time.
Read more…
This mornings opening session for Siemens Innovations ‘09 was delivered by Janet Dillione, CEO of Health Services Siemens Healthcare. Not surprisingly, the opening speech was focused on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and healthcare reform. Healthcare information technology took center stage from about an hour.
Some items of interest to me were:
Sessions I’m attending today include: Siemens Pharmacy/Med Administration Check Solutions Update, A Detailed Approach to Workflow Data Collection and MAK Design, and Barcoded Medication Administration: Is It a Luxury or Standard of Care?.
More to follow…..
Healthcare IT Consultant Blog: “The implementation of the Siemens hospital information system is a significant part of the Gauteng DoH’s overall objective to create a single electronic health record for patients across the province and to eliminate paper-based workflow. The core of the solution is Soarian MedSuite, an integrated hospital information system which proactively manages the clinical, financial and administrative process from beginning to end. As a result, hospitals and clinics are able to increase efficiency, productivity and quality of care across the healthcare enterprise.” – Wow, the hospitals and clinics in South Africa better be prepared for the wonders of Siemens “healthcare IT software”. I’ve had a little experience with it and wouldn’t exactly be thrilled with the idea. I suppose it’s better than a napkin and pencil….maybe.
Siemens utilizes an unfortunately complicated system for building reusable order sets in their pharmacy system. Unlike Meditech where you can use formulary medications, enter them the way they appear on the order set, give the newly created order set a name and save it; Siemens Pharmacy requires that you first construct a series of “Predefined Common Orders” (PCOs) and use those as building blocks for each order set. PCOs are not only used as building blocks for order sets, but can be used to create shortcuts for medication order entry as well. Each PCO must have a unique name and be specific to the order set from which is hails. Reusing PCOs in multiple order sets creates maintenance issues when one order set makes a revision and the other does not.
Read more…
Heathcareitnews.com:”One of the most striking examples of the impact of integration within the closed loop is Siemens, Hess notes. On one hand, providers who rated the Siemens Pharmacy product alone gave it a relatively low overall score of 70.8 out of 100. However, those providers who rated both Siemens Pharmacy and the Siemens bar-coding at the point of care product – Medication Administration Check (MAK) – scored the pharmacy product much higher, giving it an overall satisfaction rating of 83.9. That BPOC/pharmacy integration is one of the key reasons that Siemens Pharmacy earned the second-highest satisfaction score in the study.” - This was mentioned earlier in the week by Todd Eury at PTR, but I wasn’t able to get a close look at the article until now. I am a Siemens Pharmacy user and am not surprised by their low satisfaction score. The Siemens pharmacy system has a lot to be desired and their product support is seriously lacking. I am happy to see, however that the satisfaction with the system increases with MAK, which we will be implementing later this year.
Siemens Innovations ‘09 is being held in the “City of Brotherly Love” this year (i.e. Philadelphia). I received the registration packet in the mail just a few of hours ago. A lot of great minds gather at this meeting to discuss many timely topics. I highly recommend attending. I attended the meeting last year in Las Vegas, NV and picked up some great tips on how to make our pharmacy system run smarter and more efficiently.
Earlier this week I mentioned that Siemens U.S. Headquarters was raided. Here’s some additional information from the Healthcare IT Consultant Blog
“Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc., whose Malvern, Pa., complex was searched by Defense Department agents Wednesday, is a defendant in a whistle-blower lawsuit.
The unit of German conglomerate Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is accused in the suit of giving corporate customers of its medical imaging equipment bigger discounts than it gave the federal government while assuring the government that it was getting the best discounts Siemens offered.The lawsuit was filed under the Federal False Claims Act, which allows individuals to file lawsuits alleging fraud by federal contractors and receive a percentage of any damages recovered by the suits.
It’s a civil suit that was filed in 2004 in U.S. District Court in the Virgin Islands and subsequently amended.”
