Newman Regional Health is first in the nation to launch a pilot program alerting healthcare professionals about multidrug-resistant organisms
(EMPORIA: 01/31/24) For the past 7-months, Newman Regional Health staff has been working with KONZA National Network and Kansas Department of Health and Environment to pioneer a public health project called RapidAlerts.
RapidAlerts Direct is a real-time notification system that alerts medical staff with critical information about incoming or transferred patients. Newman Regional Health served as a testing site and provided refinements for the alerting process.
Patients can now be identified through the Kansas Health Information Network has having received a multidrug-resistant organisms (MDRO) diagnosis previously. MDROs are continuing to develop and spread in healthcare settings. Because of this, efforts to prevent MDRO transmission are needed. After being informed rapidly, the hospital’s Infection Prevention staff can implement special protocol to help keep patients and staff safe.
“RapidAlerts Direct could be transformative for infection control measures,” said Tricia Parks, MSN, RN, an Infection Prevention/Employee Health Nurse at Newman Regional Health. “The real-time alerts allow for immediate implementation of isolation and transmission-based protocols. This has significantly improved our ability to contain infections in a critical time frame and thus prevent MDRO disease from spreading to other patients and staff in our facilities. The ability to use RapidAlerts Direct allows us to continue to provide high-quality care to our patients and community.”
Dr. Kellie Wark, Antimicrobial Stewardship Lead at KDHE and Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases at The University of Kansas Medical Center, said, “Rapid pathogen identification is critical to ensuring improved patient outcomes.”
Identifying bacterial isolates generally takes days, so having an MDRO alert system expedites the notification process so that proper measures are enacted to stop and treat the disease and to minimize the risk to other patients and staff.
Newman Regional Heath is the first hospital in the nation to launch the RapidAlerts Direct project, and when fully activated, will play a key role in advancing public health outcomes. Tricia Parks, Ester Knobloch, and Lindsey Hansen of Newman Regional Health worked with KONZA National Network and Kansas Department of Health and Environment to pioneer the program.
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KONZA National Network advances health information sharing, enabling better care management, transformative value-based payment models and actionable data analytics that improve patient outcomes. KONZA’s suite of products and services integrate with clinical workflows to provide seamless sharing of health data across networks and systems. With a growing portfolio of connected sites from across the nation, KONZA provides centralized access to data, delivery of data and analytic tools for healthcare optimization. KONZA is transforming access to comprehensive patient data as one of the first organizations to onboard as a Candidate Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA).