KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A hospital trade journal gives Saint Luke’s Health System top honors for being “Most Wired”. It’s the 9th time Saint Luke’s has been made the nation’s most wired list in the Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.
“Most Wired is a method to benchmark the organization with our peers and track progress to achieving meaningful adoption of health care information technology,” said Debe Gash, vice president, chief information officer, Saint Luke’s Health System.
The hospital earned the high marks after responding to the 2009 Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study. The survey, done annually, uses the results to name the 100 Most Wired hospitals and health systems. It focuses on how the nation’s hospitals use information technologies for quality, customer service, public health and safety, business processes, and workforce issues.
Industry wide, the survey showed the economy is forcing some hospitals to make tough decisions with dwindling resources. Some hospitals report they have scaled back IT projects.
“The economic slowdown is forcing hospitals to look closely at IT spending,” said Alden Solovy, executive editor of Hospitals & Health Networks magazine. “Most Wired hospitals are doing their best to stay the course.”
IT plays a growing role in the safety initiatives in hospitals. For example, electronic medication management is considered one of the fundamentals of using IT to improve care. The survey showed an overall increase among hospitals in both the provider order entry of medications and the electronic bedside matching at the time the medications are given. At the typical hospital responding to the survey, 26 percent of medications are entered electronically by physicians, compared with 19 percent in 2008. The typical respondent has 40 percent of medications matched at the bedside, compared with 30 percent in 2008.
Hospitals taking the survey also pointed to concerns linked healthcare reform combined with budget belt tightening.
“As the health reform debate continues, it’s clear that IT will play an even more important role in the health system of tomorrow,” said Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association (AHA).
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