A patient’s condition and diagnosis can only be determined through a comprehensive picture. Patients suffer when systems are not connected or communicating. But access to data is not enough. Health care providers need access to the right data, at the right time, with the right context and granularity. By connecting hardware, such as medical devices, with an electronic health record (EHR), it is possible.
The health care industry is constantly evolving to keep up with new technologies, ever-changing regulations, the need to reduce costs where possible and improve efficiencies while still ensuring patient safety. CareAware®, Cerner’s EHR-agnostic device integration platform, exists to address the complex challenges health care organizations are facing today. By enabling seamless connectivity among medical devices, nurse call systems, location-based technologies and other network-connected systems, CareAware can help your organization improve operational efficiencies, minimize errors and reduce costs.
CareAware is EHR agnostic and vendor neutral. Simply put, we enable interoperability between medical devices, health care applications and the EHR.
We do more than simply connect devices to the EHR. With CareAware’s workflow-driven architecture, devices are integrated to provide an automatic flow of information for health care professionals to consult the medical record as the single source of truth™. This ensures the right data is presented in the right format at the right time to improve health outcomes.
CareAware removes data silos to create unparalleled connectivity. We have extensive technical expertise and vast experience analyzing, designing and implementing complex solutions that deliver value for health care facilities. CareAware can provide a comprehensive picture with device connectivity, alerting intelligence and care team communications.
Build on your organization’s IT investment no matter what EHR you use. We have more than 1,000 devices in our driver’s library and nearly 60 validated partners for a unified purpose of optimizing workflows. With CareAware, health care organizations are poised for the constant evolution of health care.
Falls prevention: According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, between 700,000 and 1 million patient falls in the hospital every year in the United States. With the average, non-reimbursable cost for a fall with injury at approximately $14,000, fall prevention is a leading initiative for most healthcare environments.
Cerner Patient Observer™ provides another layer of care and enables your facility to monitor multiple patients from a central monitoring station. At risk patients can be monitored 24/7 for patient falls, room elopement, visitors and invasive line and tube placement.
Physician texting: CareAware Connect Messenger is an application designed for physicians, allowing them to call or text their peers and other clinicians securely using their personal device.
Access to the organizational directory Group messaging and presence awareness Service based contact lists Supports cellular based phone communications
Vitals monitoring: CareAware VitalsLink® provides a streamlined, barcode-driven process on an integrated device for clinicians to chart vitals data directly into the EHR at the point of care. The context these data points provide for the diagnosis and treatment, during a hospital stay can improve overall patient health outcomes. Receiving the correct vitals data in a timely manner is critical.
CareAware VitalsLink, developed on the CareAware iBus® architecture, is designed to meet health care organizations’ most stringent demands, allowing Cerner Millennium® organizations to optimize their technology investment, while non-Cerner clients can use the CareAware iBus with their existing HIS system.
Workforce management: Cerner ClairviaSM leverages outcomes, interventions, and observations to create a custom workload calculation based on each patient’s clinical condition. By continuously comparing the incoming projected admission, discharge, transfer and workload demand with existing schedules, managers are able to easily identify any pockets of over or under staffing and proactively adjust staffing needs. Cerner Clairvia helps organizations appropriately plan for staffing needs and have those needs align to individual patient care coordinating the right patient with the right caregiver at the right time.
Bedside medical device integration CareAware iBus® for Bedside Medical Devices is a global device architecture designed to infuse medical devices with appropriate knowledge of the care process and link the patient data that is retrieved to the EHR.
Reporting and alarm management: CareAware Reporting can run detailed reports to help you assess the number, type, frequency and priorities of alarms from different devices and systems throughout your organization. These reports help you identify the alarms that should receive immediate attention and allow you to set up rules in CareAware Event Management™ to provide secondary or even tertiary notifications to providers that are designated as backups.
In an effort to provide more efficient, effective care, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (Imperial) implemented near real-time capturing of patient observations/vital signs directly into their electronic patient record, releasing an estimated 5,800+ nursing hours to patient care over a 15-month period.
Clairvia Staff Manager and Demand Manager solutions have been in use at Midland Memorial Hospital since 2008. In 2013, nursing began using technology within Cerner Clairvia℠ to help manage issues that are thought to cause dissatisfaction among some of their nurses; nurse fatigue brought on by inadequate staffing issues, overtime and irregular working hours.
Before its new command center came online, Augusta University Health (AU Health) didn’t have a way to track capacity, nursing resources or collaborate on operations. That left patients and staff frustrated. “The flow was around people, not processes,” said VP and CNO Laura Brower, MSN, RN. “There were times patients were held in the emergency department for two to three days and would be discharged without being assigned an inpatient bed.”
Naples, Fla.-based NCH Healthcare System (NCH) was no stranger to alarm fatigue. Its nursing staff was overwhelmed with too many nuisance alarms that hindered their efficiency. To combat alarm fatigue, NCH established a game-changing process. The two-hospital, 715-bed health system partnered with Cerner on a transformational alarm management strategy using CareAware®. Together, they reduced non-actionable alarms by 69 percent, without a negative impact on patient safety.
Mission Health pilots Cerner Patient Observer, results in zero falls, ROI and planned future enhancements Mission Health is piloting a brand new observation solution to help reduce patient falls, especially falls with injury. Through a testing partnership with Cerner, the Asheville, N.C.-based health system added Cerner Patient Observer to six neurosciences unit patient beds in August 2015. During the 3-month study, the average falls rate – as measured per 1,000 patient days of care – dropped from four per month to zero.
Automate the collection of vital signs and other medical device results across the continuum of care.
Cerner Patient Observer is a virtual observation solution that allows a trained observation technician to monitor multiple patient rooms from a central monitoring station, reducing sitter labor costs and preventing falls and other adverse events that occur in hospitals.