CHICAGO – HIMSS Analytics awarded three Community Healthcare System hospitals with a Stage 7 Award. The award represents Community Healthcare System’s attainment of the highest level on the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model™ (EMRAM).
Community Hospital in Munster, St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago and St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart are the first Northwest Indiana hospitals to achieve the HIMSS Stage 7 Award. Only 3.7 percent of the more than 5,400 U.S. hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics® Database received the Stage 7 Award by the second quarter of 2015.
“The achievement of HIMSS Level 7 builds upon a long history of our hospitals using technology to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care,” said John Gorski, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Community Healthcare System. “Through the process of integrating an electronic medical record system and leveraging other advances in information technology, Community Healthcare System has become a much more data-driven organization. Most importantly, we are using these new technologies to better engage our patients and the medical community in understanding how best to bring about improvements in healthcare.”
HIMSS Analytics developed the EMR Adoption Model in 2005 as a methodology for evaluating the progress and impact of electronic medical record systems for hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics™ Database. There are eight stages (0-7) that measure a hospital’s implementation and utilization of information technology applications. The final stage, Stage 7, represents an advanced patient record environment. Stage 7 healthcare organizations demonstrate superior implementation and utilization of health IT systems. Their achievement has resulted in the true sharing, information exchange and immediate delivery of patient data to improve process performance, quality of care and safety. The validation process to confirm a hospital has reached Stage 7 includes a site visit by an executive from HIMSS Analytics and former or current chief information officers to ensure an unbiased evaluation of the Stage 7 environments.
“The level of strategic alignment at the Community Healthcare System between its IT strategy and its overall vision is quite remarkable,” said John H. Daniels, CNM, FACHE, FHIMSS, CPHIMS, Global Vice President, healthcare advisory services group, HIMSS Analytics. “They are investing in advanced analytics capabilities and have effectively baked those capabilities into their clinical and business decision-making processes; and they are achieving some impressive results.”
During the HIMSS 7 validation process Community Healthcare System hospitals shared results from a number of initiatives where the use of electronic medical record systems and other information technologies have brought about improvements in the delivery of healthcare.
“We have had tremendous commitment from our doctors, nurses, allied health and information technology staff to move away from stand-alone computer systems and paper charts to a collaborative, enterprise-wide platform that brings together patient information in one place,” said Don Fesko, Chief Operating Officer for the Community Healthcare System. “The key to realizing the substantial clinical and financial benefits of these investments lies in how we are now using these new technologies to make better clinical decisions and empower our patients.”
As a result of the HIMSS Level 7 achievement, Community Healthcare System is currently preparing two case studies to share best practices with other hospitals pursuing greater integration of information technology systems.
One of the case studies examines how Community Hospital used its electronic medical record system and other technologies to quickly identify everyone exposed to what was the first case of MERs in the US. This quick identification process was instrumental in limiting the exposure risk of healthcare workers and the community, while also providing the US Centers for Disease Control with valuable insights into the highly contagious disease. A second case study shares best practices of New Healthy Me, an employee wellness program that demonstrated substantial cost savings and health improvements among its participants. New Healthy Me was awarded the 2015 Microsoft Innovation Award.
“We are just beginning to realize the possibilities of taking health data out of a paper record and putting it into an electronic form where it can be searched, accessed and secured,” said Alan Kumar, MD FACHE FACEP, Chief Medical Information Officer for Community Healthcare System. “With these technologies in place we are pushing the bar even higher to identify people with potential for developing chronic disease so we can better monitor their condition, minimize complications and reduce the need for costly care.”
The Community Healthcare System hospitals will be recognized for the HIMSS Level 7 achievement at the 2016 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition on Monday, Feb. 29-Friday, March 4 at the Venetian – Palazzo – Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nev.
