Baptist Health South Florida Recognized Among Health Care’s Most Wired
Honor highlights accomplishments in information technology
Baptist Health South Florida has been listed among “Health Care’s Most Wired” hospitals and health systems in an annual survey conducted by Hospitals & Health Networks, the flagship publication of the American Hospital Association. The survey, now in its 16th year, highlights hospitals’ use of information technology (IT) to improve care through better documentation and the reduction of errors using computerized physician order entry; provide patients with better access to healthcare information and their medical records; and improve operational performance.
Baptist Health also received a special Innovator Award for its “Take Your Meds!” program, which will be featured in H&HN’s August issue. Innovator Awards recognize achievement of business objectives, creativity and uniqueness of concept, scope of solution and impact on the organization. The “Take Your Meds!” telehealth program provides medication therapy management for home care patients with congestive heart failure. These patients receive counseling and encouragement, via in-home videoconference, from a Baptist Health “ePharmacist” in collaboration with a home care nurse.
The Most Wired survey, administered between Jan. 15 and March 15, asked hospitals and health systems nationwide to answer questions regarding their information technology initiatives. Respondents completed 680 surveys, representing 1,901 hospitals, or roughly 33 percent of all U.S. hospitals. This year’s list recognizes 445 healthcare organizations in four categories: Most Wired, Most Wired – Advanced, Most Improved and Most Wired – Small and Rural. Detailed survey results are featured in the July issue of H&HN and online at HHNMag.com.
“The Most Wired data show that shared health information allows clinicians and patients to have the information they need to promote health and make the most-informed decisions about treatments,” says Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association. “Hospitals, their clinicians and their communities are doing tremendous work to enhance their IT systems in ways that support care and delivery improvement and patient engagement goals.” Among the survey’s key findings:
- 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 healthcare, 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.
- 36 percent of Most Wired hospitals aggregate data from patient encounters to create a community health record.
- 71 percent of Most Wired hospitals manage care transitions, compared with 57 percent of all responding organizations.
- 43 percent of Most Wired organizations integrate clinical and claims data so that they are accessible, searchable and reportable across the care community.
Contact: Kathy Barbour; 786-596-6534