In Brazil, Gov. Celso Ramos Hospital Research Center Adopts UpToDate Anywhere to Aid in Medical Resident Training

The Health division of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, announced today that Research Center at Governor Celso Ramos Hospital has adopted UpToDate^® Anywhere. The institution, a public hospital that is part of the state of Santa Catarina’s Department of Health, adopted the mobile-enabled clinical decision support resource to provide continuously updated clinical information and to support the education and training of their residency program.

At Gov. Celso Ramos Hospital (GCRH), UpToDate is playing a contributing role in improving the quality of care provided to patients who receive care through Brazil’s unified health system (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS). Using UpToDate Anywhere, clinicians are able to reduce delays in care by providing diagnosis and treatment decisions more quickly.

GCRH is a general hospital located in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina. The 22,000 m² facility features 211 beds, 14 of which are in the Intensive Care Unit. The hospital has approximately 960 employees overall, with a medical staff of 137. Through the SUS healthcare system, GCRH provides free care in several medical specialties, including cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, nephrology, neurology, oncology (breast and colorectal cancer), ophthalmology, psychiatry, and pulmonology. GCRH is recognized for performing advanced surgical procedures such as bariatric surgery; corneal transplants; kidney transplants; neurosurgery; orthopedics; plastic surgery and surgical oncology.

"UpToDate is better than any journal or information portal. We have answers to nearly any question, and we can print up topics to share with the patient. UpToDate provides essential support both for the medical resident and the patient under consultation,” says Dr. José Calza, president of the GCRH Research Center. He adds, “UpToDate gives our staff access to the most modern treatments and to clinical practices being implemented elsewhere in the world. We are very pleased with the agility of knowledge acquisition that UpToDate has brought to our residency program.”

Over 100 residents and part of the clinical staff, totaling about 150 users, access the more than 10,500 clinical topics in 23 specialties provided by the online clinical decision support resource. UpToDate Anywhere enables clinicians to use mobile devices during a patient consultation and to pose clinical questions on a wide variety of cases, regardless of where the physician is – after hours at home, or in the office. Additionally, GCRH has found that for specialties like oncology where treatment options are routinely evolving, UpToDate is considered crucial. Other areas such as hematology and orthopedics also have high usage of UpToDate.

“Before UpToDate, when we had questions, we might search for information on the internet which, in addition to possibly being outdated, was not 100% reliable.” Dr. Calza adds. “From my own experience, I recall using UpToDate in relation to a patient diagnosed with Goodpasture's syndrome who was intubated in the ICU. We consulted UpToDate, which provided recommendations about the correct number of plasmapheresis sessions needed. Without this resource, we would not have known with certainty when to stop the treatment.”

UpToDate Anywhere was offered to GCRH’s residents as a result of their strong interest in using the clinical resource. Adopting UpToDate Anywhere has also helped the hospital comply with a requirement of the National Medical Residency Commission (Comissão Nacional de Residência Médica -- CNRM), created by the Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação -- MEC), which stipulates that medical residency programs make an information portal available to support the overall learning process.

“For medical residency programs like Gov. Celso Ramos Hospital, UpToDate Anywhere plays an instrumental role in supporting the formation and knowledge acquisition of residents by providing the most current, evidence-based information, authored by renowned clinical domain experts," said Denise Basow, MD, President & CEO, Clinical Effectiveness, Wolters Kluwer.  

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