For the tenth year in a row, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been named one of the nation’s “most wired” hospitals by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.
The 16th annual Health Care’s Most Wired Survey honors hospitals that are using electronic medical records and other technologies to move toward more integrated and patient-centered care.
“At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, we are honored to be recognized again as a ‘Most Wired’ awardee, and to be recognized for 10 years running,” said Blackford Middleton, M.D., MPH, M.Sc., chief informatics officer for Vanderbilt University Health System. 
“This recognition underscores the extraordinary efforts of all our clinicians, informatics and IT professionals, and operations working together toward improving how we support care, discovery and learning at VUMC. We are committed to the health care transformation with the effective application of health informatics technologies and services.”
The survey was conducted between Jan. 15 and March 15, in cooperation with McKesson Corp., AT&T, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the American Hospital Association. Respondents completed 680 surveys, representing 1,900 hospitals, or more than 30 percent of all U.S. hospitals.
Hospitals were graded based on four key measures — infrastructure, business and administrative management, clinical quality and safety and clinical integration.
The 375 top scorers were listed in the July issue of Hospitals and Health Networks magazine. The list was ordered alphabetically and rankings were not published.
The survey found Most Wired hospitals are using technology to improve quality and patient safety.
For example, more than 90 percent of them share best practices for patient safety and use checklists. Nearly half of them share hospital performance measures on their website, and 86 percent regularly provide quality scores to clinical leaders as part of performance improvement initiatives.
Findings also show that hospitals are using IT to reduce the likelihood of medical errors. For example, 67 percent of Most Wired hospitals share critical patient information electronically with specialists and other care providers. And 81 percent of Most Wired hospitals use bar code technology to match medications to the patient at the bedside.
Other findings include:
• 36 percent of Most Wired hospitals aggregate data from patient encounters to create a community health record.
• 71 percent of Most Wired hospitals manage care transitions compared with 57 percent of all responding organizations.
• 43 percent of Most Wired organizations integrate clinical and claims data so that they are accessible, searchable, and reportable across the care community.
For more information and to see the list of Most Wired hospitals, go here.
