CHRISTUS Health, a Dallas-base healthcare system, has implemented five new clinical decision support systems in order to improve care.

The solutions, provided by Elsevier, will be implemented in 25 Texas hospitals in the CHRISTUS health system, which is comprised of more than 40 hospitals, inpatient and long-term care facilities, including clinics, physician offices and healthcare services.

"Adoption of multiple Elsevier CDS solutions will enable progress in each of our directions: clinical quality, service delivery, business literacy and community value," said Thomas Royer, MD, the healthcare system's president and CEO. "CHRISTUS Health's ability to continue our journey means providing our physicians, nurses, pharmacists and associates with advanced clinical decision support tools to deliver absolute excellence."

The new tools include a suite of CDS solutions for pharmacy, medicine and nursing. The suite ofers Clinical Pharmacology, assisting doctors with drug information; ToxED 2.0, a program designed to help physicians in overdose situations; MD Consult, a service providing medical resources in an online platform; and Mosby’s Nursing Consult, which is designed to help nurses answer clinical questions.

According to health system officials, CHRISTUS recognized a need to integrate solutions and enable physicians to jump from program to program with as little effort as possible. By using one vendor for CDS products, they can jump from one solution to another without having to log in or out multiple times. This is expected to reduce the amount of time physicians need to spend with each patient, lowering the cost of care.