News Release
Anthrax Component Added To Assist D.C. Area Hospital
An anthrax component has been added to the CodoniX Emergency Department system in response to a request from Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. Last fall, the hospital received large numbers of people who had potentially been exposed to anthrax from the Brentwood postal facility and Capitol Hill office buildings - plus many of the "worried well" from surrounding communities.
"Our daily E.D. census jumped almost overnight by up to 50%," says Paul Baker, M.D., Holy Cross' prehospital care director. "Given our longstanding problems with overcrowding, the additional crush of patients was overwhelming."
Since Holy Cross had been a CodoniX site for more than five years, officials there knew that the software could be tailored to help solve the problem. Recording and transcribing large amounts of repetitive patient data by hand is an extremely time-consuming, labor-intensive task. CodoniX software accelerates this process by reducing data input to a series of clinician mouse clicks that automatically produce an accurate, fully coded patient chart.
"Within 24 hours of contacting CodoniX," says Baker, "we had an 'anthrax quick chart' that was able to generate a thorough and legible chart, complete with instructions and prescriptions... in about one-third the time of a manual system. I'm afraid if we tried to create something similar with a paper chart, we'd still be waiting."
CodoniX founder and chairman Andrew Muchmore, M.D., adds that the CodoniX system has even broader implications for improving the overall quality of public healthcare because it produces a record that can be accessed, analyzed and stored electronically.
"Now you can quickly tell how many people you saw in October who came in for anthrax screening," says Muchmore. "And the software records who did or did not show symptoms, who did or did not get antibiotics, and so on. Typically, this type of information just isn't available, or else it's generated too late to be of any immediate value. The CodoniX system can provide physicians with the information they need to treat patients according to an almost daily-changing protocol. And it lets hospital staff and administrators accurately determine the impact of a crisis on hospital resources to better prepare for the future."
CodoniX, Inc.
Steve Speights
964 Durlston Road
Redwood, CA 94062
(800) 495-7270
E-mail: Stephens@codonix.com
web: www.codonix.com
