CERNER CORPORATION 
By August 07, 2013
KANSAS CITY, Mo. and PHILADELPHIA - Aug. 7, 2013 - As a leading health care information technology and services provider, Cerner Corp. (Nasdaq: CERN) is embarking on a partnership with the Society of Hospital Medicine's (SHM) Project BOOST to reduce readmission rates in hospitals across the country. The newly established partnership will create a robust paperless platform designed to reduce 30-day readmission rates, improve clinical workflow, and improve patient satisfaction while cultivating the flow of information from hospitals to outside care providers.
Project BOOST-enabled modules from Cerner are expected to be available nationally in 2014, providing hospitals with tools, processes, data, evidence-based content, reporting, and training materials to identify and manage patients who are at a high risk of 30-day readmissions.
SHM and Cerner will use a phased approach to bring Project BOOST to Cerner's Readmission Prevention Solution within the EMR. In the first phase, SHM's principal investigators for reducing readmissions and hospital-based quality improvement will assess Cerner's current EMR systems for assisting caregivers with admissions and discharge.
The principal investigators - Gregory Maynard, MD, MSc, SFHM, Senior Vice President of SHM's Center for Hospital Innovation & Improvement, and Mark V. Williams, MD, FACP, MHM, Principal Investigator for Project BOOST and professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago - will work with Cerner to integrate the best practices from Project BOOST into Cerner's EMR processes.
"This is an exciting new step for Project BOOST and SHM," says Dr. Maynard. "This gives hospitals and hospitalists a chance to integrate the best practices from Project BOOST into their everyday life at the hospital."
Once SHM and Cerner incorporate Project BOOST into Cerner's EMR, the new Project BOOST-enabled EMR system will be piloted at sites participating in the Project BOOST Mentored Implementation Program. In the final phase, the Project BOOST EMR systems from Cerner will be introduced nationwide in 2014.
The Project BOOST Mentored Implementation Program is a groundbreaking national initiative led by the Society of Hospital Medicine and originally funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation to improve the care of patients as they transition from hospital to home or other care facilities. The Project BOOST toolkit has been downloaded by more than 6,000 people and Cerner is established in thousands of health facilities.
"Cerner has long worked to bring the best to its hospital EMR systems and the integration of Project BOOST is another example of bringing the experts directly to Cerner customers," says Dr. Hugh Ryan, Director and CMO at Cerner. "We are confident that this will help hospitals systematically address the challenges in reducing 30-day readmissions in a very real way."
Initiatives published by institutes such as the Joint Commission (JC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have brought great attention to hospital readmissions over the last few years. A landmark 2009 New England Journal of Medicine study highlighted the cost of unplanned 30-day readmissions, finding that one in five Medicare beneficiaries discharged from the hospital are readmitted within 30 days, which could potentially result in $17.4 billion in excess Medicare costs.
Since then, CMS has instituted a series of penalties for hospitals that have higher than average readmission rates. Private insurers are also aiming toward reimbursing less on readmissions. This is putting pressure on hospital margins and in many cases hospitals are losing money on readmissions. These factors are motivating hospitals to find ways to cut their readmission rates.
New research published online in July in the Journal of Hospital Medicine indicates that Project BOOST reduced readmissions by 13.6% in the original Project BOOST mentored implementation sites.
"For hospitals and hospitalists alike, this will be a welcome tool in the effort to reduce readmissions," says Dr. Williams, principal investigator for Project BOOST and a co-author on the 2009 New England Journal of Medicine study. "This new partnership will provide caregivers and hospital leaders with the commitment, systematic integration and real-world solutions that are necessary to tackle the readmissions challenge."
SHM is accepting applications through September 1st for the 2013 fall cohort of the Project Boost Mentored Implementation Program. For more information, visit www.hospitalmedicine.org/boost.
About SHM
Representing the fastest growing specialty in modern healthcare, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) is the leading medical society for more than 40,000 hospitalists and their patients. SHM is dedicated to promoting the highest quality care for all hospitalized patients and overall excellence in the practice of hospital medicine through quality improvement, education, advocacy and research. Over the past decade, studies have shown that hospitalists can contribute to decreased patient lengths of stay, reductions in hospital costs and readmission rates, and increased patient satisfaction.
For more information about SHM and hospital medicine, visit www.hospitalmedicine.org.
SHM Media Contact: Brendon Shank, (267) 702-2639, bshank@hospitalmedicine.org
About Cerner
Cerner is contributing to the systemic change of health and care delivery. For more than 30 years Cerner has been executing its vision to make health care safer and more efficient. We started with the foundation of digitizing paper processes and now offer the most comprehensive array of information software, professional services, medical device integration, remote hosting and employer health and wellness services. Cerner systems are used by everyone from individual consumers, to single-doctor practices, hospitals, employers and entire countries. Taking what we've learned over more than three decades, Cerner is building on the knowledge that is in the system to support evidence-based clinical decisions, prevent medical errors and empower patients in their care.
Cerner® solutions are licensed by approximately 10,000 facilities around the world, including more than 2,700 hospitals; 4,150 physician practices; 45,000 physicians; 550 ambulatory facilities, such as laboratories, ambulatory centers, behavioral health centers, cardiac facilities, radiology clinics and surgery centers; 800 home health facilities; 45 employer sites and 1,750 retail pharmacies.
Certain trademarks, service marks and logos (collectively, the "Marks") set forth herein are owned by Cerner Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and certain other countries throughout the world. All other non-Cerner Marks are the property of their respective owners. Nasdaq: CERN.www.cerner.com, , and YouTube.
Cerner Media Contact: Megan Moriarty, (816) 888-2470, megan.moriarty@cerner.com
Cerner Investors Contact: Allan Kells, (816) 201-2445, akells@cerner.com
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