Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is pumping more than $12.5 million into a “paperless operating room” project that foreshadows a still deeper transformation of how one of the nation's top pediatric medical centers provides care.

        The project, announced Thursday, involves installing the Centricity Perioperative information system, made by GE Medical Systems' information technologies unit. Children's is the first hospital nationwide to receive the system, said Greg Lucier, president and CEO of the GE unit.

        The system, to be installed over 18 months, will link more than 500 bedside and operating room monitors into a single network.

        The new system can send alarms directly to staffers' digital pagers and allow doctors to check real-time vital signs and other patient records no matter where they are over a secure Internet link. It also is expected to significantly improve operating room scheduling, staffing and equipment supply.

        Installing this system is the biggest step so far in a “Pursuing Perfection” initiative that started last year. The hospital's overall quality improvement effort is expected to become a model for reducing deaths and injuries from medical mistakes, said hospital president and chief executive James Anderson.

Leading the way

        “Only a small percentage of hospitals have the kinds of comprehensive digital technology we're talking about today,” Mr. Anderson said. “This project will eliminate huge amounts of paperwork and handwritten order entry. It should dramatically improve patient safety.”

        This project is being closely watched by hospitals nationwide, because Children's is one of seven lead hospitals participating in the Pursuing Perfection initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

        “There's a tremendous amount of IT (information technology) work going on in the medical world right now. Cincinnati Children's is not alone in this pursuit, but they are definitely one of the leading contenders,” said Jonathan Small, spokesman for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Massachusetts-based agency managing the Pursuing Perfection project.

        “The whole point of the project is to build models of excellence that other health care institutions can emulate,” Mr. Small said.

        According to recent studies, as many as 90,000 people a year die from avoidable medical mistakes, such as medication overdoses, harmful drug interactions, allergies and late diagnosis of treatable infections.

        Doctors say the new GE system takes the familiar bedside monitor to a whole new level.

        In many hospitals, devices that track breathing, heart rate and blood pressure start beeping in the room, or at a nearby nurse's station, should vital signs dip to alarming levels. But this system can send alarms directly to digital pagers anywhere in the hospital — including the actual vital sign readings.

        “This is an incredible advance,” said Dr. Timothy Knilans, director of cardiac electrophysiology at Children's.

        Not only can the device provide Internet access to real-time patient data, it can save 72 hours of readings for later review, a potentially important tool for health research.

        “This is like the black box in the aircraft industry that tells people what happened when the plane crashed,” Dr. Knilans said. “Now when a problem occurs, we can see what was going on an hour before.”

        In the operating room, having access to electronic medical records could help save lives.

        “Despite our best efforts, unexpected situations can emerge where we need more information right away. With this, we can retrieve information from any department in the hospital, or from anywhere in the world via the Internet, straight from a computer attached to the anesthesia machine,” said Dr. Dean Kurth, director of anesthesiology at Cincinnati Children's.

        Beyond safety, the system is expected to be a tool for improving efficiency.

        Access to electronic patient data should help staff order the exact equipment and supplies needed for a surgical procedure, saving time and money.

GE's contribution

        On average, hospital operating rooms run at 57 percent of their capacity. GE executives predict this system will boost that figure to 85 percent for Cincinnati Children's.

        But the new computer system is just one part of a budding relationship between the hospital and GE.

        Cincinnati has been home for years to GE Aircraft Engines, among the world's top producers of jet engines and a well-known leader in industrial quality management. Eight years ago, GE embraced the Six Sigma quality improvement concept introduced to manufacturers in the late 1980s by Motorola.

        “In the aircraft engine business, Six Sigma quality means 3.4 defects per million hours of flying time for our engines,” said Dr. John Zerbe, medical director at GE Aircraft Engines. “Human beings are nowhere near that perfect. But the technology that Children's Hospital is embracing gets us another step closer.”

        Pursuing perfection isn't cheap. But hospital officials predict that cost savings from avoiding errors, reducing paperwork, and getting more use out of operating rooms will recoup their technology investment in three to five years.

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