The Forth Worth, Texas-based Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Alliance (Texas Health Alliance) and the Sacramento, Calif.-based UC Davis Medical Center are the latest providers to be recognized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) analytics division, HIMSS Analytics, as a Stage 7 hospital on its EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM).
EMRAM was developed as a way to evaluate how hospitals and other provider settings have progressed in adopting electronic medical record systems (EMRs). Of the eight stages (0-7), Stage 7 hospitals represent “advanced patient record environment,” HIMSS Analytics says. The hospitals designated Stage 7 over the past year will be honored at the 2013 HIMSS conference, held in New Orleans.
Texas Health Alliance, a 50-bed, multi-service hospital offering acute care and wellness services, part of the faith-based, nonprofit Texas Health Resources health care system, has a fully integrated EHR and computerized physician order entry (CPOE).
HIMSS Analytics recognizes Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Alliance (Texas Health Alliance), in Fort Worth, Texas, with its Stage 7 Award. The award represents attainment of the highest level on the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM)℠, which is used to track EMR progress at hospitals and health systems.
“Being designated as a Stage 7 facility validates the commitment and dedication our care teams have to utilizing technology for improved patient safety, care coordination and ease of use for our caregivers. It is also recognition for the entire Texas Health Resources family as we showcase the outcomes we have been able to achieve across the enterprise as part of our EHR journey,” Winjie Tang Miao, president of Texas Health Alliance, said in a statement.
HIMSS Analytics also recognized Texas Health Alliance’s use of an enterprise data warehouse to monitor and manage best practice alerts as well as core measures as well as a high level of patient safety with its closed loop medication administration environment.
Meanwhile, UC Davis Medical Center, according to HIMSS Analytics executive vice president, John P. Hoyt, was awarded because it “operates in a paperless environment with any paper in use, such as code sheets, scanned into the EMR within 30 minutes. In fact, the hospital deploys roaming scanning teams, going from unit-to-unit to verify that scanning is fast and accurate”
Also, he says “the hospital uses a team approach for IT governance, with nurse and physician champions actively involved in this process; uses secondary data for clinical and business intelligence and research; recognizes, and is now reviewing, the impact of ICD-10 on the EMR; and offers capability for telemedicine, information exchange, and more.”
As of Quarter 3, 2012, UC Davis and Texas Health Alliance are among the 103 U.S. facilities, or 1.9 percent, of the more than 5,000 U.S. hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics Database, to be awarded the HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 Award.
