The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System is among a growing number of hospitals rolling out technology to boost the patient hand-off process.

VCU has implemented PatientKeeper Sign-Out, developed by Boston-based PatientKeeper.

"The safety of our patients is paramount to everything we do as an organization," said Alistair Erskine, VCU's chief medical information officer. "Our implementation of Sign-Out is helping us to coordinate smooth communication about patient status between shifts, adding simplicity to our care management processes that will positively impact patient care."

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Dallas-based CHRISTUS Health, which serves communities in more than 60 cities in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Georgia, New Mexico, Utah and Mexico, also recently implemented Sign-Out.

PatientKeeper Sign-Out provides a standard process for patient handoffs as specified by requirement 2E of the Joint Commission 2008 National Patient Safety Goals, according to PatientKeeper executives.

Physicians use PatientKeeper Sign-Out to log tasks and enter patient care details, problems and other information that will be needed by covering physicians when handing off patient care to the next covering physician. Patient information is automatically populated and physicians are able to create additional fields specific to their practice.

"With the PatientKeeper Sign-Out application we are providing our practicing physicians with a way to further help automate their patient care process," said Jeff Cash, CIO of Mercy Medical Center.

Cash said all of Mercy's employed and affiliated physicians already use PatientKeeper to access patient information and sign patient charts. The addition of the Sign-Out application, he said, would further enable physicians to improve the patient care process without having to learn how to use another software application.

A study published in the October Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety reported that handoffs could contribute to preventable injuries not resulting from a patient's underlying medical condition. Based on a 2006 survey of 161 medical or surgical residents at Massachusetts General Hospital, the study showed that the majority of participants had reported at least one incident of handoff-related patient harm during their month-long inpatient rotations.

"The recent exposure regarding the dangers associated with patient handoffs points to the need for automating this process," said Paul Brient, chief executive officer of PatientKeeper. "Physicians can avoid problems associated with incomplete handoff with the right tools to support them."