The latest Hospitals & Health Networks survey names the Most Wired hospitals and shows physicians are making progress on EMRs and electronic data management. Still, barriers to implementation remain.
Hospitals & Health
Networks, a publication of the American Hospital Association's Health Forum
division,
has announced its annual list of the
Most Wired
hospitals in its July 2010 issue.
This year's survey, which
H&HN conducted along with health care solutions provider
McKesson
and
CHIME (College of Healthcare Information
Management Executives), listed 99 hospitals out of
555 surveys submitted. According to H&HN, the study's objective is to track
hospitals' development by the degree of their health care IT
implementation.
Winners for this year's list
included the 99 Most Wired, 25 Most Improved, 25 Most Wireless and 25 Most
Wired - Small and Rural Hospitals.
As part of an overhaul in how
the survey is carried out, the publication turned to more CIOs for input and
organized criteria into four areas: business and administrative management,
clinical quality and safety, care continuum, and infrastructure. H&HN also
revised the survey to accommodate
meaningful use regulations for managing electronic medical
records.
The survey shows that
significant barriers remain for technology adoption in hospitals.
"The survey results
highlight that continued progress is being made, but the full potential of
health IT has not been met," said Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital
Association (AHA), in a statement.
"Hospitals embrace
health IT and recognize the many benefits it can provide to patients, but even
Most Wired hospitals face barriers to adoption. We have asked that the federal
government stimulate greater adoption by making Medicare and Medicaid incentive
payments more widely available to hospitals and physicians so more hospitals
can move in this direction."
Of the Most Wired hospitals
in the survey, numbers lagged a bit, suggested H&HN: 43 percent of
independent physicians are equipped to document medical records electronically,
41 percent use CPOE (computerized physician order entry) and 44 percent make
use of decision support.
H&HN
reported that some of the hospitals listed in its Most
Wired list, such as Atlantic Health in Morristown, N.J., are providing patients with
at least partial access to their medical records. Patients can e-mail doctors,
be sent lab results and update their medications.
NorthShore University Health
System, of Evanston, Ill., provides access to a full portal.
Of the hospitals that made
the H&HN Most Wired list, 57 percent place medication orders
electronically, an increase from 49 percent a year ago. And 55 percent of Most
Wired hospitals use bar coding or RF (radio-frequency) identification to match
prescription orders at bedside, an increase from 49 percent a year ago.
In 2010, 41 percent of
hospitals overall use physician alerts for physician, nurse and pharmacist
workflow, while 83 percent of Most Wired hospitals use this technology (an
increase of more than half).
The full H&HN survey can be found on the publication's
Website.
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