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Look doc, no wires: hospital CEO Curtis James selects a wireless network as a no-headache remedy for physician care - Cover Story

Communications News, March, 2003

Complying with federal mandates to provide accurate and secure electronic patient information should not be an issue for the oldest hospital in Birmingham, Ala. Since the early 1990s, St. Vincent's Hospital has focused extensively on technology. While containing costs is one reason, the most important factor is technology's ability to enable "high-touch" patient care, according to St. Vincent's President and CEO Curtis James.

Founded in 1898 in a city of 100,000 people without any hospitals, St. Vincent's today is the epitome of how technology is transforming healthcare practices. For the past 13 years, St. Vincent's has heavily enlisted the aid of technology in its effort to ease human suffering, improve records management and streamline medical practices throughout the hospital.

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St. Vincent's serves a five-county area and is part of Ascension Health, a $8.9-billion healthcare provider based in St. Louis. In fact, St. Vincent's is the flagship "digital hospital" for Ascension Health's 59-hospital system, which has more than 80,000 associates working in health facilities in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

St. Vincent's recorded more than 18,000 patient discharges, 120,000 outpatient visits, 3,200 deliveries and 27,000 emergency-department visits in its latest fiscal year. It has been, to a large degree, paperless for more than nine years, and has piloted and installed a variety of applications, ranging from bedside-pharmaceutical and patient bar-code scanning to speeding the admissions process by allowing patients to preregister from home using the hospital's Web-based community portal.

THE WIRELESS SOLUTION

The most recent digital solution deployed at St. Vincent's is perhaps its most advanced and far-reaching. Traditionally, the hospital has focused on ensuring that its physicians and nurses had electronic access to data and information. Increasingly, however, the priority has become timely access to those resources.

"Providing physicians and nursing staff with real-time information allows them to make the right clinical decision at the time that it makes sense, "explains James. "Wireless communications is a strategy that not only meets that goal, but also overriding mission of delivering the best, most compassionate patient care."

The first step for James was to create a wireless task force, a multidisciplinary group of physicians, nurses and hospital executives. Under the direction of task force Chairman Steve Anderson, The group first evaluated wireless LANs from the standpoint Of whether it would add value to the patient-care providers.

The group evaluated vendors and products over the course of nine months. It saw demonstrations from leading suppliers, including Nortel, Cisco and Avaya. In the first quarter of 2002, the task force recommended and the hospital's chief financial officer approved an $800,000 proposal from BellSouth for Cisco equipment. The expenditure was the latest of $45 million the hospital has appropriated for technology improvements in the last 10 years.

In explaining the decision, CEO James stressed the importance Of St. Vincent's existing strategic partnership with the Atlanta-based Communications services company, which also provides the connectivity, frame relay and redundant synchronous optical network service to access and transport mission-critical data. In addition, in 2000 Bellsouth upgraded the hospital's Cisco network infrastructure.

THE SOLUTION GOES LIVE

With the decision made and budget approved, the project implementation began-what James characterizes as the largest Cisco wireless LAN in the Southeast. The first step was a radio site survey in which BellSouth engineers determined the number of wireless access points required to provide coverage throughout the St. Vincent campus.

Last July, the wireless network went live, covering four main hospital buildings and four professional buildings (with a fifth under construction) for a total of more than one million square feet. By December, the hospital had brought an initial 35 users onto the system, including physicians, admitting clerks and IT staff.

In January, James brought in Tim Stettheimer as the hospital's first-ever chief information officer, to oversee the final touches on the 10-year effort.

"The addition of a wireless network is one of our final steps in implementing an all-digital environment," Stettheimer says. "It is key in allowing us to maximize the systems already in place and to install a computerized physician order-entry system. Through this anytime-anywhere network, our patients and clinicians' joint experience will be highly enhanced. The dollars spent on wireless networks is not only a good investment, but the right thing to do for our patients."

The wireless network consists of 167 Cisco Aironet 350 Series access points, which are remotely administered using Mobile Manager software from Wavelink Corp. A virtual private network provides authentication, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to the network.

Technology Industry

Look doc, no wires: hospital CEO Curtis James selects a wireless network as a no-headache remedy for physician care - Cover Story

Communications News, March, 2003

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