This week, Hospitals & Health Networks released the results of its annual "Health Care's Most Wired" survey, which recognizes hospitals nationwide for successful health IT planning and implementation, Healthcare IT News reports.
About the Survey
For the survey, H&HN polled 1,570 hospitals -- or about 27% of all U.S. hospitals -- in partnership with the American Hospital Association, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and McKesson (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 7/10).
H&HN evaluated the hospitals' health IT implementation across four categories:
- Administrative and business management;
- Clinical integration;
- Clinical quality and safety; and
- Infrastructure.
Survey Findings
The survey designated 215 hospitals and health systems as "Most Wired" hospitals, as well as 25 hospitals as "Most Improved" and 25 hospitals as "Most Wired -- Small and Rural."
H&HN also named "Innovator Award" winners based on submitted essays detailing noteworthy hospital IT projects.
How 'Most Wired' Hospitals Compared With Overall Hospitals
According to H&HN, the "Most Wired" hospitals have implemented systems to ensure quality patient care. For example:
- 100% of "Most Wired" hospitals have drug interaction alerts, compared with 88% of all hospitals; and
- 97% of "Most Wired" hospitals have drug formulary checks, compared with 85% of all hospitals.
H&HN also found that the "Most Wired" hospitals are better prepared for security breaches and employ more tools to protect patient data. For example, 93% of the "Most Wired" hospitals perform annual wireless security assessments, compared with 76% of all hospitals.
The survey showed that, compared with all hospitals, the "Most Wired" hospitals are more likely to:
- Engage with patients online, with 94% of "Most Wired" hospitals using Facebook and 80% using Twitter and YouTube;
- Monitor the performance of their IT infrastructure; and
- Monitor the performance of the overall hospital or health system (Weinstock/Hoppszallern, H&HN, July 2012).