Lafayette General Health Wins Prestigious Award for the Use of Predictive Medical Technology

Wouldn’t it be great if doctors knew you were getting sick before you actually were sick? With Lafayette General Health’s sepsis early prediction technology, patients are being identified and treated before their condition worsens.

Lafayette General Health (LGH) has been awarded the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2017 Enterprise Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence for outstanding achievement in utilizing technology to improve patient outcomes.

The award is reserved for hospitals and health systems that utilize health information technology to show significant improvements to patient care. HIMSS has given the award each year since 1994 and LGH is the only health system in Louisiana ever awarded this prestigious honor in health information technology.

Since its implementation, the sepsis alerting system has identified numerous patients who then successfully received life-saving treatment.

“I’ve seen firsthand how proactive this technology is,” said Amanda Logue, M.D., LGH Vice President and Chief Medical Information Officer. “Humans can’t connect the data as quickly as an algorithm in the electronic medical record (EMR). Using this to prevent a serious condition is lifesaving.”

Sepsis is the body’s extreme response to an infection. It happens when chemicals, released by the immune system (to fight an infection you already have), enter the bloodstream but cause inflammation throughout the entire body. This can result in a cascade of changes that damage multiple organ systems, leading to potential organ failure and other life-threatening conditions.

Time matters when it comes to treating sepsis and the quicker it is identified the better the outcome usually is. Because there is no single symptom of sepsis, and many symptoms are common to hospitalized patients, it is sometimes difficult for medical professionals to determine if a patient has become septic.

“Using technology is critical to improving our care delivery,” said Mike Dozier, LGH Vice President and Chief Information Officer. “This award shows how well LGH is using the best of technology in collaboration with our medical team to provide the most timely and appropriate care leading to shorter lengths of stay and better medical outcomes.”

The technology has undergone a multi-year improvement process as LGH builds more dynamic uses of its EMR.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said David Callecod, LGH President. “We continue advancing medicine year after year in leveraging technology for the betterment of our patients.”

LGH will be recognized at the HIMSS18 Awards Gala on Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada.