ATLANTA (January 2017) – Georgia-based Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has become the first in the state to achieve Stage 7 on HIMSS' Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model.
Children’s is being recognized for its work to improve patient safety, interoperability, and reliability through the combined efforts of clinical operational staff, IT and clinical quality experts in the service of better patient care. Its combined electronic medical record (EMR) integrates research, quality, and clinical care components across multiple hospital and outpatient facilities in Georgia.
The three-hospital pediatric healthcare system demonstrated advanced use of information technology to improve patient care and advanced data analytics capabilities to drive improvements predicting demand for emergency services and patient acuity changes, said HIMSS officials.
HIMSS Analytics developed the eight-stage EMR Adoption Model as a way for hospitals to track IT maturity in comparison to other healthcare organizations nationwide. Just 4.6% of hospitals in the U.S. have achieved Stage 7. To attain this award, an organization must successfully pass all seven levels of HIMSS Analytics' Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, which is used to track EMR progress at hospitals and healthcare systems. A site visit from a HIMSS Analytics executive and former or current CIO helps ensure an unbiased evaluation of Stage 7 status.
"Children’s has implemented advanced technology capabilities that include capturing discrete data into the EMR, as well as Big Data systems to provide advanced analytical capabilities driving care-improvement," said John H. Daniels, Global Vice President of Healthcare Advisory Services Group for HIMSS Analytics.
The three Emergency Departments at Children’s ranked among the highest-volume emergency service lines in the country in 2015, with 225,545 patient visits. Despite these record volumes, Children's was ranked among the top 12 pediatric healthcare systems nationally for the fewest patients who left without being seen before undergoing any medical screening, evaluation or treatment, due in part to the emphasis on processes that support timely screening and treatment by a provider.
“Efficient patient flow is very critical to us to provide safe, high quality care for our patients,” said Laura Jones, MD, Clinical Director of Emergency Services at Children’s. “We use predictive analytic models on a yearly, monthly and weekly basis to help make sure we have clinical and provider staffing that matches the predicted volumes.”
The model takes into account many factors that influence Emergency Department volumes, such as school seasonality, holidays, weather effect and flu effect. It also allows Children’s to effectively plan and be prepared for the winter surge.
"Achieving EMRAM Stage 7 recognizes the efforts of our clinical, administrative and IT teams over many years to improved quality, safety and reliability, along with a strong commitment to use data in innovative ways to improve our services," said Jeremy Meller, Vice President of IT at Children’s. “The achievement has also helped us focus on the ‘last mile’ of improvements in our infrastructure to provide the foundational capabilities critical to continued advancement of technology at Children’s."
Children’s will be recognized with its Stage 7 Award at HIMSS17, which takes place Feb. 19 through Feb. 23, 2017, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.