Pyramis was an excellent addition
Anna Jaques Hospital installed Pyramis, the flagship data management HeartCentrix product from Cardiac Science for the hospital market, to replace a slow, cumbersome manual process for reading and managing ECG data. The non-M.D. staff found immediate efficiency gains as well as a finer understanding of their role in delivering cardiac care.
Anna Jaques is a 123-bed community hospital in Newburyport, Massachusetts widely known for its trauma center and wound care, primary stroke service and birth center. After several years with Burdick Vision Premier Holter and Quinton Q-Stress systems, its first-rate cardiology team installed Pyramis in 2005 with ten Quinton Eclipse Premier ECG devices. The hospital has near term plans to link all of its cardiology devices through Pyramis.
Greater Newburyport is one of three communities selected for the pilot Massachusetts e-Health Collaborative and initiative that aims to establish an electronic health record system that would enhance the quality, efficiency and safety of care in Massachusetts.
Anna Jaques has ten Quinton Eclipse Premier ECG carts integrated with Pyramis. Its emergency department has two carts, the ICU has one, all of the surgery suites have one, and the outpatient clinic is equipped with one as well. Pyramis is integrated with Anna Jaques’ Meditech system. So after a doctor enters an order for an ECG test on Meditech, Pyramis informs the ECG and pulls demographic data on the patient from the admission process. At Anna Jaques, ECG tests are performed during morning rounds; the cardiology team performs 20 to 50 ECGs daily and later downloads all of the data from the ECGs to Pyramis. (The hospital has plans to upgrade its ECG carts with wireless connectivity, which will allow this download to happen in real-time.)
Then, the team uses the Pyramis ECG data management system to review each ECG file, edit the demographic information, attach the doctor’s orders, interpret the data and assign the file to specific cardiologists for their review and confirmation. Pyramis routes the signed file to the patient’s electronic record as well as to a printer that generates a hard-copy.
Prior to the Pyramis installation in 2005, this was a burdensome, labor-intensive manual process. The cardiologists had to sit down with about 30 ECG read outs and read their interpretation into a dictation machine so that another member of the team could type it into the data management system. The cardiologists would then have to review the files a second time before hard-copies could be created and filed, again by hand. The hospital performed about 15,000 ECGs annually in this fashion.
Changing the paradigm…
Several new cardiologists joined the Anna Jaques staff in 2004 and, having trained on automated systems, pushed for adoption of a more modern management application.
“The cardiologists were very excited to have Pyramis installed, and they ran with the new system right away,” said Jacqueline Carroll, MS RN, FNP-C, Clinical Manager, Cardiology at Anna Jaques. “Some other members of the staff were more tentative about the change, especially those who were less comfortable with computers and new technologies."
“The transition to Pyramis was excellent,” she continued. “The folks from Cardiac Science who managed the installation and trained our people was already well known to us, from having maintained our Q-Stress equipment. Everyone was professional, direct and fun. They kept everyone calm, and after a few weeks, the whole staff was up and running on the new system.”
“And the service has been excellent. I’ve only called three or four times since we installed Pyramis in 2005. I always get a live person right away. They have remote access to our system, and they have always corrected the problem right away.”
Having been freed from the manual process, the effect on staff morale and patient care was palpable. “With greater automation, everyone felt more value-added and less of a rote administrator,” Ms. Carroll observed. “If you look at any small hospital like ours where they are still managing their cardiology data by hand, I am sure you’ll find that they are as beaten down by it as we were. Everyone hates busy work.”
“From an efficiency standpoint, Pyramis was an excellent addition to our department,” Mr. Carroll said. “The staff was ecstatic to leave the typing behind; it was so cumbersome! And our cardiologists had more time to focus on patients and other procedures and tests. They actually spend more time administering stress tests, which makes the whole department more efficient.”
MS RN, FNP-C,
Anna Jaques is a 123-bed community hospital in Newburyport, Massachusetts widely known for its trauma center and wound care, primary stroke service and birth center. After several years with Burdick Vision Premier Holter and Quinton Q-Stress systems, its first-rate cardiology team installed Pyramis in 2005 with ten Quinton Eclipse Premier ECG devices. The hospital has near term plans to link all of its cardiology devices through Pyramis.
Greater Newburyport is one of three communities selected for the pilot Massachusetts e-Health Collaborative and initiative that aims to establish an electronic health record system that would enhance the quality, efficiency and safety of care in Massachusetts.
Anna Jaques has ten Quinton Eclipse Premier ECG carts integrated with Pyramis. Its emergency department has two carts, the ICU has one, all of the surgery suites have one, and the outpatient clinic is equipped with one as well. Pyramis is integrated with Anna Jaques’ Meditech system. So after a doctor enters an order for an ECG test on Meditech, Pyramis informs the ECG and pulls demographic data on the patient from the admission process. At Anna Jaques, ECG tests are performed during morning rounds; the cardiology team performs 20 to 50 ECGs daily and later downloads all of the data from the ECGs to Pyramis. (The hospital has plans to upgrade its ECG carts with wireless connectivity, which will allow this download to happen in real-time.)
Then, the team uses the Pyramis ECG data management system to review each ECG file, edit the demographic information, attach the doctor’s orders, interpret the data and assign the file to specific cardiologists for their review and confirmation. Pyramis routes the signed file to the patient’s electronic record as well as to a printer that generates a hard-copy.
Prior to the Pyramis installation in 2005, this was a burdensome, labor-intensive manual process. The cardiologists had to sit down with about 30 ECG read outs and read their interpretation into a dictation machine so that another member of the team could type it into the data management system. The cardiologists would then have to review the files a second time before hard-copies could be created and filed, again by hand. The hospital performed about 15,000 ECGs annually in this fashion.
Changing the paradigm…
Several new cardiologists joined the Anna Jaques staff in 2004 and, having trained on automated systems, pushed for adoption of a more modern management application.
“The cardiologists were very excited to have Pyramis installed, and they ran with the new system right away,” said Jacqueline Carroll, MS RN, FNP-C, Clinical Manager, Cardiology at Anna Jaques. “Some other members of the staff were more tentative about the change, especially those who were less comfortable with computers and new technologies."
“The transition to Pyramis was excellent,” she continued. “The folks from Cardiac Science who managed the installation and trained our people was already well known to us, from having maintained our Q-Stress equipment. Everyone was professional, direct and fun. They kept everyone calm, and after a few weeks, the whole staff was up and running on the new system.”
“And the service has been excellent. I’ve only called three or four times since we installed Pyramis in 2005. I always get a live person right away. They have remote access to our system, and they have always corrected the problem right away.”
Having been freed from the manual process, the effect on staff morale and patient care was palpable. “With greater automation, everyone felt more value-added and less of a rote administrator,” Ms. Carroll observed. “If you look at any small hospital like ours where they are still managing their cardiology data by hand, I am sure you’ll find that they are as beaten down by it as we were. Everyone hates busy work.”
“From an efficiency standpoint, Pyramis was an excellent addition to our department,” Mr. Carroll said. “The staff was ecstatic to leave the typing behind; it was so cumbersome! And our cardiologists had more time to focus on patients and other procedures and tests. They actually spend more time administering stress tests, which makes the whole department more efficient.”
Jacqueline Carroll
MS RN, FNP-C,
Clinical Manager, Cardiology Anna Jaques
Related Products
Pyramis Data ManagementQuinton Eclipse Premier ECG
