CHICAGO, Ill. — The Healthcare Information Management Systems Society recently announced that Children’s Medical Center, located in Dallas, Texas, is a 2013 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence winner. Since 1994, the Nicholas E. Davies Award has recognized excellence in the use of health information technology, specifically the use of the electronic health record to successfully improve healthcare delivery processes and patient safety while achieving a demonstrated return on investment.
Winning enterprise organizations include academic medical centers, community hospitals, rural health hospitals and critical-access hospitals. These organizations must demonstrate the value of the EHR in supporting the delivery of patient care and, as well as document improved patient outcomes, identify the challenges faced and describe the solutions implemented in a manner that can be replicated by other organizations. Winners of the HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award must have achieved Stage 6 or Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model.
Founded in 1913, the not-for-profit Children’s Medical Center is the fifth-largest pediatric healthcare provider in the country. The medical center has nearly 700,000 patient admissions and visits annually with 595 licensed beds at its two full-service campuses in Dallas and Plano, Texas, multiple specialty clinics and 16 primary care MyChildren’s locations. Children’s was the state’s first pediatric hospital to achieve Level I Trauma status and is the only pediatric teaching facility in North Texas affiliated with UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Children’s Medical Center introduced an innovative concept for pediatric care when the organization embedded clinical pathways into hospital workflows using its EHR. The goal was to decrease variation in care, and improve patient outcomes and the quality of care. The use of pathways for bronchiolitis, asthma and appendicitis (as examples) has resulted in significantly improved patient outcomes. Compliance with clinical guideline recommendations has been improved with education, easy-to-use order sets and data sharing to support the pathways. In addition, Children’s has used multiple EHR-enabled strategies for engaging patients and their families in their own care.
Children’s Medical Center will be recognized at the 2013 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, Fla. on Feb. 23-27, 2014. For more information on applying for the HIMSS Davies Awards of Excellence, visit the HIMSS Davies Award website. Applications are accepted throughout the year.
