Cerner is working with the University of Kansas School of Nursing to help better educate the nurses of tomorrow on how to use state-of-the-art electronic health records and information. At the same time, KU doctors and researchers in diabetes are assisting Cerner as it looks to improve the health and well-being of its employees while developing strategic ways to reduce the company’s health care costs.

One of the challenges the KU School of Nursing has faced is how to best educate nursing students about the rapidly changing world of health information technology. In particular, nursing students must learn to master electronic health care records for their patients. In the past, all patient information was handwritten by doctors and nurses. Now, in a growing majority of health care settings, electronic health records track a patient’s condition, medications and notes from doctors and other health care professionals.

In an effort to teach nursing students how to keep electronic health care records and use clinical information, the School of Nursing began to use Cerner’s Academic Education Solution, known by faculty and students as the Simulated E-hEalth Delivery System (SEEDS) program, in the fall of 2001.

Helen Connors, RN, PhD, FAAN, associate dean of academic affairs and director for the Center for Healthcare Informatics at the School of Nursing, said SEEDS is proving beneficial to students because it exposes them to an electronic clinical information system designed for care delivery.

"There is a whole different skill set and thought process in using an electronic health care record, as opposed to documenting patient information on paper," said Connors. "It can be a challenge to get students and nurses to understand that process."

The SEEDS program has provided tools that have become part of the School of Nursing curriculum. These tools not only demonstrate to students the paperless system for recording and documenting health care information, but also helped change the way the faculty teaches.

"We are continuing to build on the KU School of Nursing program," said Brice Jewell, program manager for health professions education at Cerner. "We have seen its potential and how it has transformed teaching and learning there."

Cerner is taking the same innovative approach to health care internally. In an age when many corporations are decreasing health care benefits, Cerner knows that taking care of its employees, who are referred to as associates, has to be a top priority.

The company provides its own health insurance to workers and emphasizes preventive health in an effort to reduce the cost of health care through its Healthe Exchange program.

"Cerner is very invested in the health promotion of its associates, and it sees them as a valuable asset," said Connie Beaufort, program developer for Healthe condition management. "At the same time, we recognize that health care costs are spiraling out of control and we needed to get a handle on them."

Cerner decided to put diabetes prevention at the top of the list because the incidence of the disease is rising, affecting more people in younger age groups and threatening them with the long-term adverse effects of the disease. Cerner’s program tries to prevent or stall the onset of the disease in its workforce and implement a plan to help associates already diagnosed with diabetes to better manage the disease.

Cerner engages associates to better manage their diet and exercise habits, demonstrates how to cook healthy meals and distributes accelerometers to those enrolled in the program. Accelerometers are wireless devices, similar to pedometers, that measure steps, movements and calories expended each day to help control diabetes. Cerner is collecting data on factors such as hemoglobin results, weight, self-goals and quality of life, and that’s where KU Medical Center has been a key collaborator.

To ensure that Cerner’s study was scientifically sound and would produce useful and accurate data, the company solicited help from the University of Kansas Diabetes Center for Innovation, which is a part of the Great Plains Diabetes Institute (GPDI). Lisa Stehno-Bittel, PhD, PT, professor and chair, Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, David Robbins, MD, director of GPDI, and Valmi Sousa, PhD, ARNP, BC, associate professor, School of Nursing, have been collecting data from the Cerner associates participating in the program in order to determine whether the workers are benefitting from it and whether Cerner is, in fact, making their associates healthier.

Stehno-Bittel said the situation at Cerner is ideal for diabetes research, because the test group is controlled – all of the subjects in the study are going to the same medical clinic, and they all work in the same place, so their day-to-day environment is somewhat similar. "The partnership with Cerner has been extremely helpful to us," said Stehno-Bittel. "It is so gratifying to see research making an impact in people’s lives that may eventually lead to new strategies that will benefit large numbers of people in our community." +