Edward, Elmhurst among Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems

Hospitals & Health Networks has named two hospital systems within Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare – Edward Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital – to its 2014 list of the nation’s Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems.

Edward Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital were among 15 hospitals or health systems in the Chicago area and two of five in the west suburbs to make the Most Wired list.

“The driving force behind everything we do in IT at Edward and Elmhurst is to improve our processes and patient care outcomes,” says Bobbie Byrne, MD, System Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare.  “When we can measure it, we can improve it.”

The recognition is based on the 16th annual Health Care’s Most Wired Survey, which was conducted by Hospitals & Health Networks January 15–March 15.  The survey asked hospitals and health systems nationwide to answer questions regarding their IT (information technology) initiatives.  Respondents completed 680 surveys, representing 1,900 hospitals, or more than 30 percent of all U.S. hospitals.

The survey found as the nation’s health care system transitions to more integrated and patient-centered care, hospitals are utilizing information technology to better connect disparate care providers.

Among the key findings:

--Among Most Wired hospitals, 81 percent of medications are matched to the patient, nurse and order via bar code technology at the bedside.

--67 percent of Most Wired hospitals share critical patient information electronically with specialists and other care providers.

--Nurses and physicians share best practices for patient safety and use checklists at more than 90 percent of Most Wired organizations.

--To help consumers make better decisions about their health care, standard measures of individual hospital quality performance are reported and publicly available.  Nearly half of Most Wired organizations share this information on their websites and 86 percent provide quality scores to clinical leaders on a regular basis as part of their performance improvement initiatives.

--71 percent of Most Wired hospitals manage care transitions compared with 57 percent of all responding organizations.

--69 percent of Most Wired hospitals use tools for retrospective analysis of clinical and administrative data to identify areas for improving the quality of care and reducing the cost of care delivered.

--35 percent of Most Wired hospitals use social media to deliver care management messages and 40 percent provide mobile applications for secure messaging with patients.

Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare, the health system created by the 2013 merger of Edward and Elmhurst, provides comprehensive healthcare to 1.7 million residents in the west and southwest suburbs of Chicago at three hospitals.  The system has 50 locations, 7,700 employees, 1,700 staff physicians and 1,700 volunteers.  For more information, visit www.edward.org and www.emhc.org.