ECRI Names Guthrie Clinic Winner of 2023 Health Technology Excellence Award

ECRI names the Guthrie Clinic as the winner of its 2023 Health Technology Excellence Award. ECRI’s annual award honors a member facility for implementing an exceptional initiative to improve patient safety, reduce costs, or otherwise facilitate better strategic management of health technology.

The Guthrie Clinic, a rural integrated health system serving patients in New York and Pennsylvania, won this year’s award for its strategic approach to addressing staffing shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using an artificial intelligence AI-enhanced video and communications platform, the organization rapidly implemented a telesitting program to address their immediate need — a staffing crisis. Significantly, this initiative also served as the first phase and proof of concept for developing a virtual command center — called the Guthrie Pulse Center — that would centralize certain operational and patient care functions and provide greater access to clinical expertise regardless of where the patient was being treated.

Beyond addressing the staffing crisis, the Guthrie Clinic’s initiative positions the organization to better meet patients’ future needs as healthcare delivery models evolve. The project is intended to help the organization improve care — and improve access to care — in a variety of settings across the large geographic region that the health system serves.

In addition to naming the Guthrie Clinic the 2023 award winner, ECRI recognizes the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality as runner-up for its development and implementation of an innovative safety-event-reporting software application. Award finalists are Einstein Medical Center, Jefferson Health, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.