EHR-Linked Care Orchestration Software Reduces Errors for 75% of Penn Medicine Users

More than 80% of clinicians at the Philadelphia health system felt their daily work would take more time without the digital workflow system. Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, a clinical informatician at Penn Medicine and cofounder of Penn spinoff CareAlign, a vendor of care orchestration software, says the first 20 minutes of a clinical shift can be like drinking from a fire hose, with fragmented bits of information coming from colleagues, cheat sheets and patients. She said the Penn Medicine team knew there was a better process for handoffs – the transition from one team to another. "That was our initial starting point from leadership – find a way to centralize documentation and notes so that teams can get up to speed quicker," Airan-Javia recalled. CareAlign is a care orchestration-technology platform developed in part by the Penn Medicine health system.

"As we began to source feedback from clinician leaders, nurses and administration, we realized CareAlign could serve many roles," Airan-Javia said. "Since making the platform available, CareAlign has been voluntarily adopted by 94% of inpatient services at Penn Medicine," she reported. The Penn Medicine team went through several versions of CareAlign before it achieved the success it has today. When it started, Penn Medicine was using a dozen different EHRs. So right from the start, CareAlign needed to integrate with all of them to provide a wide-lens view of clinical data for decision-making at the point of care. Additionally, clinicians accessed patient data during rounds 50% more often than teams that were not using CareAlign. CareAlign keeps clinical teams on the same page with regard to their patients' care plans, which enables everyone on the care team to clearly communicate the care plan to patients and answer their questions accurately. CareAlign also improves documentation workflows by allowing users to update their care plan throughout their shift and use the work they've already done to build their progress note, Airan-Javia said.