MALVERN, Pa., - Siemens Medical Solutions (www.usa.siemens.com/healthcareit) congratulates Dr. Kenneth R. Bertka, chief medical information officer, Catholic Healthcare Partners, Northern Division, Toledo, on receiving one of the 2007 Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS) Awards, which recognizes individuals for excellence and outstanding achievement in applied medical informatics. As one of only 6 award recipients, Dr. Bertka was honored for his successful deployment of a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system and dedication to other physician information technology (IT) initiatives in 2006 while serving as regional medical director of information and process services for Mercy Health Partners (MHP), based in Toledo, Ohio.

During his tenure at MHP, Dr. Bertka developed and chaired the physician design committee and championed the successful roll-out of Siemens Medical Solutions INVISION® CPOE across four of MHP's community hospitals. Just last year, more than 1,000 community physicians and 350 resident physicians entered orders through the CPOE system.

Dr. Bertka was also influential in many CPOE-related initiatives once the system was in place at all facilities including: the creation of a regional process to develop evidence-based clinical guidelines and order sets across the four MHP facilities live on CPOE, resulting in the availability of more than 700 order sets; incorporation of complex order sets, such as pediatric weight-based dosing and chemotherapy orders, into the CPOE system; development of a pathway for medical students to submit orders through a test mode for attending and resident physicians to then review and incorporate into active orders, if appropriate; design of a verbal order signature function to meet a new requirement that all verbal orders, when used, had to be signed within 48 hours, resulting in 46% increase in compliance within the first six weeks of implementation; and implementation of several clinical support alerts, including duplicate order alerts, duplicate class alerts, pneumococcal and influenza vaccine reminders, CHF reminders and restraint reminders.
In addition to his involvement with MHP's CPOE plan, Dr. Bertka also played an integral role in other IT initiatives at MHP. First, he established a regional committee that worked to set the IT strategy and priorities for all of MHP's facilities. He also piloted several of MHP's IT programs in his private office, such as portal, lab notification, picture archives and communication system (PACS), online signatures and online dictation editing. Dr. Bertka is also a strong advocate of the use of electronic medical records (EMR) in ambulatory settings. Presently, he is leading an initiative to make an EMR system available to small- and medium-sized physician practices in northwest Ohio.

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