Stellara revolutionizes medication process at Randolph County

The Randolph County Medical Center (RCMC) in Pocahontas has revolutionized its pharmacy with the Stellara Clinical Intervention and Patient Monitoring system, powered by TheraDoc Expert System Platform.

A product of bioMrieux Inc., the largest infectious disease company in the world, the Stellara system provides knowledge-enriched, disease-specific recommendations for medication treatment management.

“It guides you down a path,” RCMC Pharmacy Director Mike Broyles, PharmD, who is helping develop and test the product, said. “From a clinical standpoint, there’s a lot you can do.”

The system incorporates pharmacy, lab and microbiology to provide the best treatment for the patient. It develops a five-year data depository so that when it’s given a diagnosis it can create a treatment specific to the patient population in the facility where it’s located.

“It’s actually learning,” Broyles said. “It’s not using another demographic area’s information.

“It knows the information coming in is specific to our facility then makes a record based on the information.”

To avoid adverse events, Stellara generates alerts based on a variety of pre-programmed and customized factors. Broyles has programmed approximately 150 custom alerts. Alerts range from problem-prone drugs to labs and drug levels. The program can also show how a different medication could be used for the benefit of the patient, such as switching forms of a drug to remove an IV and potential infection site. It can calculate and double check dosages and trend and graph information.

Stellara aids in antibiotic selection, based either on empiric selection or a identified organism and antimicrobial sensitivities. The pharmacist is provided lists of medications, duration, costs, alternatives, expert guidelines and references directly cross-referenced with the patient’s information.

“It’s unique,” Broyles said. “There’s nothing else out there like it.

“Clinically, you can take care of more people at a deeper level. You can take better care of them because of the information.”

Information from the program can be reviewed by any browser with secure log-in, printed, e-mailed or sent by alpha-numeric text message. Broyles said that RCMC has received a grant to purchase LifeDrive PDAs for physicians. These will allow physicians to review Stellara’s information wirelessly at anytime during patient care to help make the right decisions from the beginning.

As a benefit to the hospital, Stellara is designed to show how physicians are saving money or how a different treatment option could’ve saved money. It can track the number of interventions and report the hard dollar amount of money saved.

“The end result is grossly affected by length of stay,” Broyles said. “If the length of stay is less then there’s a lower cost, and the hospital can make money.

“We can’t make mistakes and be squanderous in a small hospital.”

Broyles estimates that 20 Stellara systems are currently operational in the nation, with approximately 40 more being implemented.

 

Randolph County Medical Center
Stellara Project