UPMC Horizon and UPMC Northwest Join Select Group of Hospitals In Advanced Use of Electronic Medical Records to Improve Patient Care
PITTSBURGH, July 10, 2012 –
UPMC Horizon and
UPMC Northwest join 10 other
UPMC hospitals as being among the most advanced in the world for their use of comprehensive electronic medical records (EMRs), a key component in providing the safest, highest-quality patient care.
According to HIMSS Analytics, both UPMC Horizon and UPMC Northwest are now at “Stage 6” for EMR adoption. HIMSS Analytics, a not-for-profit subsidiary of the
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), scores hospitals based on their progress in completing eight stages (0-7) to create a paperless patient record environment. Stage 6 requires that a hospital has implemented full physician documentation and scheduling, clinical decision support that provides guidance for all clinical activities in the form of variance and compliance reports, and a picture archiving and communication system for medical imaging.
Only 7.4 percent of the more than 5,000 U.S. hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics database have reached Stages 6 and 7. In addition to UPMC Horizon and UPMC Northwest, UPMC Bedford Memorial, UPMC Passavant, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, UPMC McKeesport, UPMC Mercy, UPMC Presbyterian, UPMC Shadyside and UPMC St. Margaret have also reached Stage 6, and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC has reached Stage 7. ISMETT, UPMC’s transplant hospital in Italy, has reached Stage 6 of the HIMSS European EMR Adoption Model and was the first hospital in Europe to receive this distinction.
“This accomplishment at UPMC Horizon and UPMC Northwest is a testament to the commitment of the employees at both facilities and to their understanding of the mission that has motivated our deployment of this technology for more than a decade: better, safer care for our patients,” said
James J. Venturella Jr., chief information officer, Physician and Hospital Services, UPMC. “By the end of this year, we expect that all of our medical-surgical facilities will have achieved Stage 6 status or higher.”
Over the past five years, UPMC has invested more than $1.3 billion in technology to support clinical excellence and administrative efficiency as it creates new models of accountable care. The only organization to be named one of the “most wired” hospitals for 14 consecutive years by Hospitals & Health Networks, UPMC has also been ranked for 10 consecutive years in the InformationWeek500, a list of technology innovators across all industries.