INDIANAPOLIS — The Purdue University Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering and St.Vincent Health have teamed up to re-engineer health care delivery in a three-year agreement that includes a research component and an endowed professorship.
“It is part of the mission of St.Vincent Health to ensure that we participate in innovative partnership relationships that increase participation in leadership and decision-making that result in improved outcomes for those served,” said Deeni Taylor, St.Vincent Health executive vice president and chief strategy officer. “Therefore, the goals of this partnership are high, as we believe we can reinvent and re-engineer health care.”
The first phase of this partnership will focus on the mission of the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) to have all health care facilities across the state share timely and appropriate patient information, Taylor explained. While ultimately the initiative will be used statewide, the processes will be implemented first at 16 St.Vincent Health facilities.
“We are happy to continue and expand our relationship with St.Vincent and its parent Ascension Health,” said Joe Pekny, interim director of the Regenstrief (REE-gen-streef) Center and a professor of chemical engineering.” St. Vincent will be an important “living laboratory,” where our researchers can work with medical professionals to improve health-care delivery by taking a multidisciplinary systems approach.”
The program will use collaborative research to provide recommendations in the following areas:
• giving patient care time back to caregivers;
• creating blueprints for effective flow and throughput;
• supporting patients throughout the continuum of care;
• determining optimum facility size, scope of activities and deployment of services;
• implementing appropriate patient-centered care environments;
• maximizing efficiencies in the revenue cycle.
Ken Musselman, Regenstrief Center strategic collaboration director, emphasized the long-term relationship between Purdue and St.Vincent Health.
“We want our faculty and students to establish relationships with St.Vincent Health professionals,” he said. “We need to work together to improve the quality and efficiency of health care first in Indiana and then use the prototypes we develop here on the national and international level.”
The Purdue Regenstrief Center is supported by three-year start-up funding of $1 million annually by the Regenstrief Foundation in Indianapolis. The Purdue Regenstrief Center is a sibling organization and partner with the Regenstrief Institute at Indiana University Medical School. The Purdue Regenstrief Center, administratively housed in the e-Enterprise Center in Discovery Park, officially began operations on Jan. 1, 2005.
