EJGH Announces New Alignment With Cerner to Enhance Healthcare Delivery Capabilities

East Jefferson General Hospital (EJGH) announced a strategic alignment with Cerner Corporation that will allow the Metairie-based hospital to enhance clinical processes and healthcare delivery capabilities.

Since 2006, EJGH and Cerner have partnered to implement clinical information systems, improve patient outcomes, and transform healthcare delivery through the use of the Cerner Millennium® system. The new alignment will allow EJGH to rapidly advance its healthcare systems and deploy new capabilities to optimize resources, achieve efficiencies and cost savings. Cerner will assume operational and administrative responsibilities for the EJGH information technology environment via its ITWorksSM solutions and services, including remote hosting, monitoring, and system performance capabilities. These capabilities will protect EJGH’s electronic health data while ensuring the high availability of systems.

“EJGH is pleased to partner with Cerner in this strategic initiative. This will allow us to incorporate electronic health records (EHRs) in a way that helps care providers, doctors, and consumers throughout the New Orleans area”, said Mark J. Peters, MD, EJGH president, and CEO. “Enhanced EHRs will positively impact patient outcomes and provide real-time data to our clinicians.”

The Cerner® solutions being implemented include computerized provider order entry (CPOE), bar-coded medication administration, and clinical decision support within the health system’s clinics, hospitals, laboratories, and diagnostic centers. Patient benefits include:

• Improved quality of care through broader access to more complete cross-continuum health record information electronically;
• Increased efficiencies and streamlined workflows to provide doctors with accurate, real-time patient histories;
• Reduced Adverse Drug Events by having real-time, integrated, and contextual information available to the clinician when placing prescription orders and alerts based on that information;
• Reduced wait times as physicians have real-time access to relevant clinical information and the wait for charts to be pulled is eliminated;
• Improved patient safety by providing access to complete clinical data. Providers can make decisions based on a more complete set of clinical data.

The alignment will emphasize a model of care that puts the patient at the center and ultimately builds efficiency, effectiveness, and technological advancements of the health care system while lowering the overall cost.

“East Jefferson General Hospital and Cerner share common goals to transform health care and the patient experience”, said Mike Neal, Cerner senior vice president. “Our new alignment will combine the knowledge and expertise of doctors, nurses, health professionals, engineers, and IT experts from both organizations, to enhance the way healthcare is delivered in this region”.

About East Jefferson General Hospital

Opening on Valentine’s Day, 1971, East Jefferson General Hospital started as a 250-bed facility with almost 250 physicians serving the newly burgeoning suburbs of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. From the beginning, the hospital was to be a not-for-profit community hospital with a board of directors comprised of representatives from the community’s financial, educational, civic, and business community. Today, EJGH stands as a state-of-the-art hospital with more than 420 beds. EJGH is Louisiana’s first Nurse Magnet hospital and is affiliated with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. This community hospital now serves the metropolitan New Orleans region, with a staff of more than 3,000 team members and 650 physicians.

EJGH Media Contact: Keith Darcey, 504-889-7110 office / 504-339-4279 cell / kdarcey@ejgh.com