Georgia-based Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has become the first provider in the state to achieve Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM).
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 health record (EHR) integrates research, quality and clinical care components across multiple hospital and outpatient facilities in Georgia, HIMSS said in a Jan. 10 announcement.
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 percent of hospitals in the U.S. have achieved Stage 7. To attain this award, an organization must successfully pass all levels of HIMSS Analytics’ EMRAM, 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 and CMIO ensures an unbiased evaluation of Stage 7 status.
Children’s, 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, HIMSS officials say.
"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," Jeremy Meller, vice president of IT for Children’s, said in a statement. “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,” he said.
John H. Daniels, global vice president, healthcare advisory services group, HIMSS Analytics, added, “Children’s has implemented advanced technology capabilities that include capturing discrete data into the EHR as well as big data systems to provide advanced analytical capabilities driving care-improvement.”
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will be recognized at the 2017 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition on Feb. 19-23, 2017, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.
