NEW ORLEANS – The Ochsner Health System, one of the largest non-university based physician-training centers in the country, has gone live with a new anesthesia information and drug management system at 41 locations.

The New Orleans-based health system tapped Atlanta-based DocuSys, Inc., for technology now being used at anesthesiology locations at Ochsner Medical Center and the Ochsner-Merrill Hines Surgery Center. DocuSys is providing an anesthesia information management system equipped with advanced decision support for the documentation of national quality measures and extensive ad-hoc reporting capabilities.

DocuSys officials say the anesthesia drug management system supports barcode scanning of anesthesia drugs, advanced narcotic tracking and a coding module to better capture professional fees and document co-morbidity conditions.

Ochsner also purchased DocuSys' presurgical care management system, an advanced risk management and presurgical testing management solution. It is slated for installation later this year.

"I am extremely pleased that the benefits of the DocuSys anesthesia information system have become available to Ochsner patients and their perioperative teams," said Armin Schubert, MD, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at Ochsner.

"Ochsner is implementing the first technology that allows narcotics, dispensed from CareFusion`s Pyxis Anesthesia System, to be electronically reconciled at the point of care with documentation of narcotic administration in the DocuSys Anesthesia Information Management System (AIMS)," said James Douglas, MD, an Ochsner anesthesiologist and clinical project manager for the AIMS project.