Healthcare IT News - August 2008 - (Page 18)

18 Healthcare IT News ■ August 2008 hoSpItalS & IdNs www.HealthcareITNews.com MedSphere urges military’s use of Vista By BeRNIe MoNegaIN, Editor ALISO VIEJO, CA wIRed Continued from page 13 - Medsphere Systems, Inc. , which has taken the Department of Veterans Affairs’ open source electronic health record system - called VistA - to the private sector, says the Military Health Service would be making a mistake by dropping a proven system. The Military Health Service is expected to decide this week whether to dismantle its EHR system, called AHLTA (Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application), in favor of another system that officials say would be easier to use. The AHLTA system, developed by Northrop Grumman, has been criticized for its inability to connect with the VA’s VistA system, considered a model by many industry insiders. Congress has asked the Defense Department and VA to use a common electronic system. The Military Health Service has hired consultant Booz Allen to come up with an alternative to AHLTA. VistA could be an option. More at healthcareITNews.com e connect: VISta 0808 l Medical Directors of Information Systems. Bria said that hospital CEOs and boards of directors might mistakenly believe that the simple installation of healthcare IT would lift quality in a hospital. “The most wired hospital isn’t necessarily the best decision-making organization,” he said. The Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study is conducted “Information technology alone does not transform care.” – Paul Clark, MD annually by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine. In addition to the “100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems” list, the magazine releases lists of the “25 Most Improved,” the “25 Most Wireless” and the “25 Most Wired - Small and Rural” hospitals. According to the magazine, the lists are based on a detailed scoring process of the self-reported survey data. The survey asks hospitals to report on how they use information technology to address safety and quality, business processes, customer service, workforce and public health and safety. This year, 556 U.S. hospitals and health systems completed the survey, representing 1,327 hospitals overall. The results of the Most Wired survey tend to reflect positively on the overall image of the hospitals making the list, said Turner Billingsley, MD, of the McKesson Corp., which partners with Accenture, the American Hospital Association and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives to support the survey. Alden Solovy, editor of Hospitals & Health Networks, defended the data in the Most Wired survey, while acknowledging that there might be room for criticism. “If there is a weakness in the survey, it’s that we have combined an awards program with a benchmark,” he said. “But the survey wouldn’t have reached the visibility it has without the awards and ranking aspect. The numbers assigned to the hospitals represent the differences between organizations – they don’t represent anything ‘real.’ And we do use verifications to try to take the gaming out of the responses.” “Hospital executives like this survey because it’s a good marketing tool,” one physician said. Another attendee agreed, suggesting that hospitals only participate in the survey because they know that it can be used for marketing purposes. Paul Clark, MD, an internist and member of the clinical informatics team at Concord Hospital in Concord, N.H., said that while it is probably true that information technology is necessary for clinical improvements, it is not sufficient, and more evidence linking IT use and quality improvement was necessary. “Information technology alone does not transform care,” Clark said. “There is a danger in interpreting this survey in a way that suggests that IT led to these results. What really makes the difference is having an institutional focus on transformation.” ■ More at healthcareITNews.com e connect: WIreD 0808 l e l connect: orIoN 0808 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://healthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9685 http://www.orionhealth.com http://healthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9681

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Healthcare IT News - August 2008 Contents Closer to IT Bill PHIN or RHIOs? Making Leaps After the Flood Tidal Change Denmark Bound Bridging the Divide Robot That Could Mobile Computing Data Everywhere

Healthcare IT News - August 2008

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