DALLAS, Dec 2, 2013 — Children’s Medical Center was named a 2013 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence winner by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). The Nicholas E. Davies Award recognizes excellence in the use of health information technology, specifically the use of electronic health records (EHR) to successfully improve the delivery of health care and patient safety while still achieving a demonstrated return on investment.
“It is a great honor to receive the prestigious Davies Award,” says Christopher J. Durovich, Children’s president and chief executive officer. “This recognition reaffirms Children’s leadership in our innovative use of health information tools to deliver an optimal and advantaged experience to our patients and their families from the moment they come into our care. This award underscores Children’s dedication to advancing the application of health information technology in pediatric health care, and reinforces our overall position as the leading provider of complex pediatric care in North Texas.”
Children’s, the fifth-largest pediatric health care provider in the country, was lauded by HIMSS for its innovative use of health information technology in pediatric care based on several case studies and the respective achievements, including the:
- Introduction of embedded clinical pathways into hospital workflows using EHRs, which decreased variation in care, and improved patient outcomes and the quality of care, particularly for patients with bronchiolitis, asthma and appendicitis
- Improvements in compliance with clinical guideline recommendations that included education, easy-to-use order sets, and data sharing to support the clinical pathways
- Use of multiple strategies for engaging patients and their families in their own care using EHRs
“Given how sensitive clinical treatment of children can be because of many factors, such as their age and weight, the use of clinical pathways in pediatric care processes is ‘unchartered waters’ to a certain extent,” says Janis Curtis, Davies Enterprise Committee chair and business relationship management executive at Duke University Health System. “What Children’s has done in this regard, and the positive clinical outcomes achieved, is indeed commendable.”
Past HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award winners include academic medical centers, community hospitals, rural health hospitals and critical-access hospitals. These organizations must demonstrate the value of the EHR in supporting the delivery of patient care as well as document improved patient outcomes, identify the challenges faced, and describe the solutions implemented in a manner that can be replicated by other organizations. Winners of the award must have achieved Stage 6 or Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model. HIMSS designated Children’s a Stage 7 health care organization.
Children’s Medical Center will be recognized at the 2013 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, FL. on February 23-27, 2014.