Advocate Health Care makes ‘most wired’ system list

Downers Grove-based Advocate Health Care has been named as one of the nation’s most wired health systems in this year’s Most Wired Survey by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.

It is the 11th straight year Advocate has made the list.

Survey leaders say health care systems that make the list are making great strides in establishing the basic building blocks for creating robust clinical information systems aimed at improving patient care. That includes adopting technologies to improve patient documentation, advance clinical decision support and evidence-based protocols, reduce the likelihood of medication errors, and rapidly restore access to data in the case of a disaster or outage.

“We are very proud to be named as one of the nation’s Most Wired health systems for another year,” said Bruce Smith, senior vice president and chief information officer at Advocate Health Care. “We are making the most of our technology to help achieve the best possible health outcomes for the patients we are privileged to serve.”

The survey uncovered some promising trends this year including:

타 Sixty-nine percent of Most Wired hospitals and 60 percent of all surveyed hospitals report that medication orders are entered electronically by physicians. This represents a significant increase from 2004 results when only 27 percent of Most Wired hospitals and 12 percent of all hospitals responded, “Yes.”

타 Seventy-one percent of Most Wired hospitals have an electronic disease registry to identify and manage gaps in care across a population compared with 51 percent of total responders.

타 Sixty-six percent of Most Wired hospitals share patient discharge data with affiliated hospitals, in comparison to 49 percent of the total responders.

타 Thirty-seven percent of Most Wired hospitals do so with nonaffiliated hospitals versus 24 percent of total responders.

“This year’s Most Wired organizations exemplify progress through innovation,” says Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association (AHA). “The hospital field can learn from these outstanding organizations ways that IT can help to improve efficiency.”