Jupiter Medical Center; Meets Heightened Tissue Regulatory Requirements To Assure Patient Safety

Case Study Jupiter Medical Center At a Glance Organization Jupiter Medical Center Jupiter, Fla. – 169 beds – Not-for-profit – Large orthopedics specialty Solution Spotlight – Clinical Procedure Resource SolutionsTM – Horizon Tissue ManagerTM Critical Issues – Meeting expanded regulatory requirements – Identifying tissue expiration – Assuring patients of their safety Results – Compliance for regulatory audits – Proactive identification of tissue expiration – Accurate and complete tissue records – Quick traceability of implant history and patient use – Improved nursing productivity – Tissue inventory expense savings

Meets Heightened Tissue Regulatory Requirements to Assure Patient Safety In the past, when patient safety issues – such as contaminated tissue – stirred debate in local and national media, Jupiter Medical Center (JMC) would have struggled to quickly pull the data needed to reassure its patients that they had not been affected. Now, after abandoning paper records and implementing Horizon Tissue ManagerTM from McKesson, JMC can assure patients of their safety and keep pace with growing regulatory requirements. In fact, JMC maintains complete implant records and is fully compliant with all regulations.

Challenges JMC, a 169-bed, not-for-profit hospital in Jupiter, Fla., has a large orthopedics specialty requiring a high-volume inventory of tissue implants. With The Joint Commission and FDA expanding the regulations and management requirements of tissue, JMC needed to shed its manual processes to comply. JMC’s manual processes included nurses recording tissue data in loose-leaf notebooks that served as the implant log. With this method of management, JMC could not track its true tissue utilization. Inventory was often reordered when adequate stock was available. Additionally, the manual processes made tracking tissue expirations difficult, which led to wasted inventory, lost

dollars and even expired tissue ending up in the OR. “When the father of a local OR nurse was about to undergo surgery for a nonhealing wound,” recalls Beth Suriano, director of surgical services at JMC, “the tissue came into the OR before the circulator determined that it had expired. I knew things had to change.”

Answers JMC is a longtime user of McKesson’s clinical and financial solutions. When Suriano discovered Horizon Tissue Manager, a robust yet simple software system, she knew she had the perfect solution. Horizon Tissue Manager is a component of McKesson’s Clincial Procedure Resource SolutionsTM, which create a more efficient workflow process to facilitate reliable delivery of resources – such as surgical trays and instruments, tissue and device implants, medical scopes and mobile medical equipment and carts – to front-line caregivers. Horizon Tissue Manager guides users to document information required for regulatory compliance throughout each step in the tissue management process. Additionally, prompts and alerts notify staff if required information is missing. JMC’s tissue records are now complete and ready for audits, and ongoing quality assurance is easily achieved.

Case Study

“We can now confidently answer the question: ‘Is the item you implanted in me safe?’ With Horizon Tissue Manager, the answer is: Yes.”

Beth Suriano Director of Surgical Services Jupiter Medical Center

JMC uses Horizon Tissue Manager to manage tissue inventory proactively. With color-coded screens, alerts and other tools to notify staff of item expiration, Horizon Tissue Manager gives JMC the confidence of sound inventory.

and then leafing through its pages to find the tissue record. With the integration of Horizon Tissue Manager and STAR®, McKesson’s hospital information system, dual entry of patient information by nursing staff is eliminated.

JMC also benefits from the system’s ability to identify soon-to-expire inventory, which enables the medical center to return soon-toexpire consignment inventory back to tissue banks or vendors before expiration.

JMC is looking forward to further enhancing its tissue management process through the integration between Horizon Tissue Manager and Horizon Surgical ManagerTM, McKesson’s surgical information system. Duplicate data entry will be eliminated and workflow will be streamlined by sharing tissue details during pre-, intra- and post-operative care. Additionally, staff time will be saved through the seamless flow of information.

Suriano believes Horizon Tissue Manager has saved JMC more than $10,000 in the last year by either eliminating expired inventory or reducing reordering of unnecessary inventory. “We have thousands of items in the OR, and with our manual processes we were never sure that an item was even sitting in the freezer — let alone about to expire,” says Suriano. “With Horizon Tissue Manager, everything we need in regard to tissue implants – patient identification, implanting physician, procurement facility, arrival and implant dates, expiration of bone – is at our fingertips.” Nurses, too, find the automated system simplifies their daily workflow. Horizon Tissue Manager enables them to locate a tissue record by scanning the tissue bar code versus manually locating a binder stored in a file cabinet McKesson Provider Technologies 5995 Windward Parkway Alpharetta, GA 30005 http://www.mckesson.com

Results Horizon Tissue Manager boosted JMC’s confidence in its ability to comply with all regulatory requirements and successfully complete The Joint Commission and FDA audits. Nursing productivity has improved due to the automated workflow and data capture. And JMC is realizing significant annual savings in tissue inventory expense. Most importantly, patient safety is improved. Suriano says, “We can now confidently answer the question: ‘Is the item you implanted in me safe?’ With Horizon Tissue Manager, the answer is: Yes.”

Copyright © 2009 McKesson Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. STAR is a registered trademark of McKesson Information Solutions LLC. Clinical Procedure Resource Solutions, Horizon Surgical Manager and Horizon Tissue Manager are trademarks of McKesson Information Solutions LLC. All other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks, service marks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. PRT384-06/09