Clinicians now access Wolters Kluwer’s real-time sepsis monitoring alerts within EHR at Tift Regional Medical Center

Wolters Kluwer, Health today announced that Tift Regional Medical Center, the flagship hospital of Southwell, a Georgia not-for-profit health system, has integrated POC Advisor*, its sophisticated sepsis algorithm and monitoring solution, into the hospital’s Cerner electronic health record (EHR) workflow. The integration is aimed at improving early sepsis identification and care delivery and reducing alert fatigue. Presenting alerts within the Cerner workflow, POC Advisor* delivers highly accurate sepsis identification and bundle compliance that clinicians can trust.

Marie Roof, Chief Information Officer at Tift Regional Medical Center, said, “Our focus is really on improvements in quality overall. We selected POC Advisor* to move the mark on clinical quality metrics, including sepsis bundle compliance.” She continued, “We understand the key to driving improvements is communicating timely patient status changes to clinicians. Accurate and early identification of sepsis is the first step toward driving improvements for bundle compliance and ultimately length of stay reduction and overall patient outcomes.”

Motivated by improved sepsis care

Before choosing a comprehensive sepsis surveillance solution that integrates with their EHR, Tift had a fragmented approach to identify sepsis patients and manage sepsis performance. Low-quality alerts were often ignored, and nurses were managing SEP-1 bundle compliance with manual processes. The bedside teams were concerned with alert fatigue, inefficiency, and the potential for missing important steps in care. 

With the Cerner EHR integration, POC Advisor* detects sepsis patients and, as doctors and nurses access the patient record, POC Advisor* displays alerts along with Tift’s sepsis order sets, which ensure evidence-based care is consistently delivered. In addition to point of care alerting, Tift’s sepsis coordinator uses POC Advisor’s central monitoring dashboard to surveil the entire hospital and ensure sepsis patients receive care that complies with the sepsis bundle.

“We respect best in breed. The solution available to us in the EHR had low sensitivity and specificity for detecting and alerting on sepsis, and we do not have the developers on staff to create our own system,” said Roof. “Choosing a solution like POC Advisor* gave us what we need and made implementing the solution across our hospital easy.”

Proven track record on sepsis management

“We are excited that Tift Regional Hospital chose POC Advisor* as their sepsis monitoring solution and that our collaboration with Cerner ensured a seamless integration at the point of care,” said Karen Kobelski, Vice President and General Manager for Clinical Surveillance, Compliance & Data Solutions at Wolters Kluwer, Health. “Smarter, evidence-based alerts that work within a clinician’s workflow, instead of adding to it, are harder to dismiss and can lead to faster interventions for better sepsis outcomes.”

*POC Advisor is now Sentri7® Sepsis Monitor