Electronic health record system adoption was a primary factor involved in determining which hospitals were picked for U.S. News & World Report's "Most Connected" list, unveiled this week. Overall, 156 hospitals were recognized by the publication, which required that every hospital on its list both meet the federal government's Meaningful Use criteria and have reached either Stage 6 or 7 status from HIMSS Analytics for EHR adoption.
Hospitals on the list also all were recognized on the publication's Best Hospitals list, released last month.
Among the hospitals on the list that achieved Stage 7 status for HIMSS Analytics--which means that a facility has gone completely paperless for delivery and management of patient care--were the Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, Stanford (Calif.) Hospital & Clinics, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and nine Kaiser Permanent facilities, eight of which were located in California.
According to U.S. News and HIMSS, 1.2 percent of U.S. hospitals have reached Stage 7 status; 5.2 percent are at Stage 6.
The list comes on the heels of the release of Hospital & Health Networks' 14th annual Most Wired hospitals list. That list, which includes 215 organizations throughout the U.S., based its honorees on four criteria in four categories:
- Infrastructure: Identity management, security technology safeguards, etc.
- Business and administrative management: Expanded use of electronic payer transactions, patient flow automation, etc.
- Clinical quality and safety: Routine use of EHRs and clinical information systems by providers, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) for medication orders, etc.
- Clinical integration: Physician-officer EMR connectivity for clinical documentation and viewing results, physician office e-prescribing, etc.
More than 660 hospitals and health systems completed H&HN's survey, representing 1,570 hospitals (roughly 27 percent of all U.S. hospitals).
To learn more:
- here is the U.S. News list
- read this accompanying article on how the hospitals were selected