Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – February 2, 2020:   King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (KFSH&RC) is one of four recipients of this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Davies Award of Excellence and is in the top 100 list of organizations worldwide to achieve this award. KFSH&RC is the first HIMSS Davies Award winner in the Kingdom and the first outside of North America to achieve HIMSS Stage 7 Ambulatory and HIMSS Stage 6 Analytics Maturity.

The HIMSS Davies Award recognizes outstanding achievements of organizations that have utilized health IT to substantially improve patient outcomes through sharing evidence-driven best practices on implementation strategies, workflow design, change management and patient engagement. 

“The HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence for KFSH&RC Riyadh & Jeddah shows the maturity and interoperability of our Integrated Clinical Information System (ICIS) since its inception more than 17 years ago,” said Majed Al Fayyad, MD, MMM, Chief Executive Office of KFSH&RC. “To reach this level of excellence and, more importantly, to share our lessons with the wider health care community is truly an enterprise-wide achievement and speaks to the dedication, usage and adoption of technology by our staff.” 

KFSH&RC manages three facilities in the country and plays the role of a tertiary service provider for specialized medicine services, such as oncology, cardiology, transplant and fertility with approximately one million outpatient visits each year. Since the 2002 implementation of ICIS with the Cerner Millennium® electronic health record (EHR), KFSH&RC has realized several long-term improvements that stood out to the HIMSS selection committee.
To quantify the benefits of ICIS, KFSH&RC conducted detailed studies of their influenza vaccine, breast & colon cancer screening and the ‘Smart Tech to Smart Care’ utilizing Cerner Smart RoomTM project. These studies showed improvements to patient and staff experiences and communications, as well as smarter ways to engage patients in their health journey.

Influenza vaccine

During Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage, approximately three million pilgrims from across the globe visit Makkah in addition to the 18 million that visit throughout the rest of the year. With the increasing pandemics of influenza occurring worldwide since 2010 (including H1N1, MERs- CoV, etc.), KFSH&RC, the gateway to Makkah, targeted increased vaccination and testing for influenza.

KFSH&RC utilized Cerner’s Health Maintenance module, part of the KFSH&RC EHR system, to remind clinicians of patients due for influenza vaccination. To increase compliance, these reminders were the first pieces of information presented to clinicians inside their workflow and were also pushed directly to patients through their patient portal as preventative care. 

KFSH&RC has sustained improved volumes of influenza vaccinations administered by an increase of more than 300% on average1. In addition, KFSH&RC has increased testing for influenza by more than seven times and significantly increased the volume of prescriptions to treat affected patients. 

Breast & colon cancer screening

Colon cancer and breast cancer are considered the number one malignancy for males and females, respectively in Saudi Arabia. Cerner’s Health Maintenance module reminds clinicians of patients due for cancer screening directly in their workflow. In addition, as preventative care, screening reminders are pushed directly to patients through their patient portal.

KFSH&RC significantly increased proactive testing of patients for these cancers to help with early detection. These interventions yielded huge increases in early stage cancer detection. For example, the volume of fecal occult blood test ordered from 2014-2018 rose 59%. Similarly, the volume of mammogram test orders rose 30% over the same period, compared to baseline data. The number of positive results through this increased screening rose 267% for colon cancer and 600% for breast cancer.  

Smart Tech to Smart Care

The leadership team of the King Abdullah Center for Oncology & Liver Disease (KACOLD), part of KFSH&RC, sought to transform the delivery of patient care and address issues related to staff-to-staff and patient-to-staff communication to develop an improved experience with patients at the center.  
KFSH&RC decided to enhance communication to improve the timeliness of care delivery, increase care team communication and improve existing levels of clinical decision support. This ultimately led to an increase in patient safety, decrease in number of manual interventions and manpower, as well as decrease of length of stay for patients.

The KFSH&RC team worked with Cerner to design and deploy the Cerner Smart Room, leveraging a significant number of new solutions and tools unique to both the region and the world. KFSH&RC decreased average length of stay by approximately 9% through the interoperability of these new solutions with the Cerner Smart Room, along with evidence-based guidelines and clinical pathways to improve outcomes and communication2. 

In addition, compared to baseline measures for the same unit, patient satisfaction score increased by 28% for environmental cleanliness, 25% for pain management, 12% for nurse communication and 14% for physician communication (as reported through standardized patient perception studies). In addition, the volume of data-entry errors was reduced by 99% through automation of vital signs documentation. This automation saved on average 140 minutes of staff time per patient per day in the critical care units and 58 minutes of staff time per patient per day in non-critical care units3.

“This recognition by HIMSS highlights the positive paradigm shift that technology can now cause in health care. Health care can no longer operate as a car workshop because technology has begun to put pressure on quality, cost and access as demonstrated by this digital transformation at KFSH&RC,” stated Osama Al Swailem, MD, MA, Chief Information Officer at KFSH&RC. “The health care revolution has begun!”

“King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre has been a long-time Cerner client and we congratulate them on their recent award for achieving the HIMSS Davies Award. This level of accomplishment does not come without many years of hard work, adoption and determination,” said Alaa Adel, Managing Director, Cerner Middle East and Africa. “We are proud that Cerner is one of the key components that helped KFSH&RC receive such an honor and we wish them many more successes in the future.”