National survey lauds VUMC’s informatics
Vanderbilt University Medical Center has again been named among the nation's 100 “most wired” hospitals and health systems.
The 2006 Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study was conducted by Hospitals and Health Networks magazine, Accenture, McKesson Corp. and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.
This is the second consecutive year that Vanderbilt has been included on the list. Vanderbilt is also the only Tennessee health care facility named.
“This is welcome recognition for the continued collaborative efforts of clinicians and other users from throughout the clinical enterprise. More than any other ingredient, it's this collaborative spirit that has nurtured the Informatics Center and the development of information technology at VUMC,” said Bill Stead, M.D., associate vice chancellor for Health Affairs and director of the Informatics Center.
All U.S. hospitals are eligible to participate in the annual survey. Respondents fill in a questionnaire about their use of information technology to support safety and quality, customer service, public health, business processes and the hospital workforce.
In all, 541 hospitals and health systems participated in the 2006 survey; individual hospitals represented by the respondents totaled 1,217.
The 100 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 top tech hospitals,” said the survey report, “continue to lead the nation in how technology is deployed and employed to improve care, including: using a wider array of IT tools to address quality and safety; physicians entering significantly larger percentages of orders themselves; and the organization conducting a larger percentage of clinical transactions via information technology.”