NurseZone - Survey Reveals Most Wired Hospitals, Suggests Link to Reduced Mortality Rates

NurseZone - Nursing news: "Nursing news

Survey Reveals Most Wired Hospitals, Suggests Link to Reduced Mortality Rates

By Christina Orlovsky, senior staff writer

Information technology has been making its way into hospitals and other health care institutions across the country for years, as health care providers and administrators become increasingly aware of its effect on quality improvement. Just how many hospitals have jumped on the IT bandwagon�and remained committed to the cause�becomes clear at this time every year as Hospitals & Health Networks reveals its list of 100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Care Systems.
For the seventh year, Hospitals & Health Networks, in conjunction with IDX Systems Corp., Accenture and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, produced the Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study. According to the publication, every hospital in the United States was invited to participate in the survey, which asked hospitals to report their use of technology to address five key areas: safety and quality, customer service, business processes, workforce, and public health and safety. This year, 502 surveys were submitted representing 1,255 hospitals.
The results showed that there are three key areas in which Most Wired hospitals differentiate themselves from the rest, according to Alden Solovy, executive editor and associate publisher of the journals of the American Hospital Association, which publishes Hospitals & Health Networks.
�The Most Wired use a wider array of IT tools to address quality and safety; they have a significantly larger percentage of physicians that enter orders themselves; and they conduct a larger percentage of clinical activities via information technology,� he said.