EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced that Denver Health and Hospital Authority teamed up with EMC Consulting, a fast-growing business within EMC Global Services, to help Denver Health strategize, design, implement, and manage comprehensive technology solutions to streamline operations.
Denver Health, a 500-bed "safety net" facility, is committed to serving patients of all economic levels. Nearly half of its patients are uninsured or unable to pay, and services to the uninsured are expected to total nearly $360 million in 2009. The hospital system, comprising a medical center, a regional Level I trauma center, a 911 system, family health centers, public school clinics, Denver Public Health, a poison and drug center, an inmate health care program, and the Rocky Mountain Center for Medical Response to Terrorism, has invested more than $350 million in IT over the past 12 years.
"Our goals have been to improve patient care quality and safety, while at the same time increasing efficiency and controlling costs, and we're achieving those goals," said Patricia Gabow, M.D., CEO of Denver Health. "Although Denver Health is Colorado's largest uninsured and Medicaid provider, we remain financially sound, and a large part of our fiscal strength can be attributed to our innovative and widespread use of technology. We believe there is no healthcare facility in the nation that's done as broad and deep a transformation as ours."
EMC Consulting provides the strategic guidance and technology expertise organizations need to manage their business and information infrastructure challenges and derive the maximum value from their information assets and investments. EMC Consulting helps customers, including more than half of the Global Fortune 500 Companies, leverage information in new ways to navigate challenging market conditions and realize their ambitions in the information economy. With consulting expertise across organizations' business, applications and infrastructure architectures, combined with deep industry expertise, EMC Consulting delivers transformational thinking and execution to turn the potential of information into actionable strategies and business results.
Teaming with EMC Consulting, Denver Health conducted a thorough assessment of its business environment to evolve its processes into an end-to-end, digital healthcare environment. Denver Health implemented several hundred applications, 70 of which it considers core to its business, such as financial coding, claims 'scrubbing,' clinical support and medical imaging (PACS). Some of the key initiatives undertaken by Denver Health and EMC as part of this comprehensive partnership include an Eligibility Re-Verification System to maximize the reimbursements it can recoup from previously uninsured patients; new automated systems for tracking infectious disease testing, and vaccination and immunization delivery and tracking; and professional services necessary to support ongoing applications:
- Eligibility ReVerification System (ERV) -- The number of uninsured patients Denver Health treats each year increases annually, making it critical to capture all available insurance reimbursements. The ERV system automates the formerly manual processes for collecting patient information and submitting claims, helping Denver Health recoup the maximum reimbursements from insurers. Since its deployment in 2004, the ERV system has helped Denver Health recover more than $28 million in revenue.
- HealthDoc -- Denver Health's nationally recognized process for reporting tests and results for communicable and sexually transmitted diseases is made possible by replacing a manual system with HealthDoc, a fully automated, paperless system that cuts the time required to get reports to patients and County health officials from more than four days to less than one.
In September, 2009, Denver Public Health, a division within Denver Health and Hospital Authority, was awarded the 2009 Public Health Davies Award of Excellence from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). The Davies Award recognizes excellence in the implementation and use of health information technology, specifically electronic health records (EHRs).
- VAX TRAX -- An immunization tracking, vaccine administration and inventory management system, VAX TRAX ensures that the right vaccines are delivered to their target populations. It has helped to improve Denver Health's pediatric vaccination rates from about 60% of one-year-olds to 92%, and eliminated inefficiencies and human error that resulted in unused or expired vaccines.
"Healthcare delivery is all about technology -- we're gathering every bit of information that we can, about everything that we do in the clinical perspective, and it is all going in a data warehouse, because if you can measure it, you can improve it or fix it," said Gregg Veltri, CIO of Denver Health. "Through our partnership with EMC, we're using the data in very innovative ways to eliminate waste and manual processes and become more streamlined and cost effective."
In addition to helping maximize the value of information in Denver Health's data warehouse, EMC Consulting also provided experts to implement a cost-effective, scalable IT infrastructure that delivers high performance and near 100% uptime with advanced monitoring, planning, redundancy, and virtualization solutions.
EMC Consulting's Healthcare Practice provides deep industry expertise to help healthcare providers of all sizes implement effective solutions to address today's healthcare challenges. The Healthcare Practice develops strategies which leverage a portfolio of technologies that can be applied to address specific needs -- such as implementing the supporting information infrastructure needed to demonstrate "meaningful use" of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to support ARRA HITECH Medicare and Medicaid initiatives.
About EMC
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.
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SOURCE EMC Corporation
