EHR helped improve care as well as bottom line
The University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, which has already achieved Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics scale, has won the 2014 enterprise Davies Award.
With the use of its electronic health record, the health system was able to improve workflow and documentation as well as significantly reduce adverse drug events and hospital acquired infections.
[See also: Iowa health system attains Stage 7 for EMR adoption.]
Moreover, with the use of almost 500 best practice alerts and analytics, UIHC significantly reduced instances of venous thrombosis, sepsis, pneumonia and other clinical conditions.
As result of improved documentation and secondary diagnosis capture, cost avoidance associated with improved clinical outcomes, and reduced mortality and length of stay, and incentives paid for quality improvements, UIHC has net cash flow of more than $50 million from July of 2013 to June of 2014 attributable towards the use of information technology.
As UIHC migrated from an in-house EHR to an industry standard in 2009, it improved patient and medication safety as well as showed improvement in CMS Surgical Care Improvement Project measures, keeping the project in the forefront of the organization's quality improvement goals.
"University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics have done a tremendous job of leveraging information technology to integrate efforts to improve quality and the financial bottom line at the same time," said Jonathan French, HIMSS director of quality and patient safety, in a news release. "UIHC's use of information technology to improve care delivery and documentation has resulted in significantly improved clinical outcomes leading to cost avoidance, efficiencies, reduction in claims rejections, and increased revenue. Thus, UIHC has achieved a positive return on investment without even factoring in meaningful use dollars. The Davies Committee and HIMSS congratulate the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics staff for its focus on improving the health outcomes of their patient population through the effective use of health IT."
"We are absolutely delighted with this recognition," said Kenneth P. Kates, UIHC chief executive officer, in a press statement. "The entire information technology department, in partnership with our outstanding clinical staff, has achieved astounding progress in delivering on multiple goals. Nothing trumps the quality and safety of patient care, and we believe that the investment we made in our information technology systems and processes is clearly helping us achieve that goal."
- Substantial improvement in medication safety of adverse drug event causing harm count prior to implementation ≥ 9 annually to two in the two previous fiscal years.
- Adherence to pediatric immunization guidelines improved by 50 percent;
- Anticoagulation venous thromboembolism adherence to guidelines increased 33 percent;
- Regulatory compliance with SCIP measures rose from 32 percent in CY 2007 to 96 percent inpatient in CY 2012'
- Preoperative antibiotics order errors reduced by 71 percent;
- Surgical H&P compliance rose from less than 50 percent pre-implementation to over 98 percent;
- Early adoption of smart pump EHR integration served to improve guardrail usage which helps to avert severe harm.
Access the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Davies Award application here.
