UC San Diego Health System to receive HIMSS' Stage 7 Award

UC San Diego Health System has received the prestigious Stage 7 Award from HIMSS Analytics, a nationwide-system used to track electronic medical records (EMR) progress at hospitals and health systems. The hospital will be recognized at the annual HIMMS conference in February 2012 in Las Vegas.

"UC San Diego Health System is delighted and honored to be designated as a Stage 7 Health System. We appreciate HIMSS Analytics leadership and energy in focusing national attention on the importance of leveraging technology to help improve health care delivery across the country," said Edward Babakanian, Chief Information Officer, UC San Diego Health Sciences. "At UC San Diego Health System, we have a tradition of using information technology to help our care teams further improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care that we provide every day."

HIMSS Stage 7 represents "the pinnacle of an environment where paper charts are no longer used to deliver patient care." UC San Diego Health System is one of only 58 hospitals - 1.1 percent, of the more than 5,000 hospitals in the database - to be recognized by HIMSS Analytics with its Stage 7 Award.

"Congratulations to UC San Diego Health System for earning the Stage 7 award," said John P. Hoyt, FACHE, FHIMSS, Executive Vice President, Organizational Services, for HIMSS. "As the first of the five University of California health sciences systems to receive the award, UC San Diego deserves recognition for implementation of the electronic health record across its healthcare enterprise. During our site visit, our team was impressed with the medical staff's successful deployment of health IT with a majority of physicians truly engaged with and using the technology in this interactive and safety-focused environment."

HIMSS Analytics developed the EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM) in 2005 as a methodology for evaluating the progress and impact of electronic medical record systems for hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics™ Database. Tracking their progress in completing eight stages (0-7), hospitals can review the implementation and utilization of information technology applications with the intent of reaching Stage 7, which represents an advanced patient record environment.

"This award recognizes that the success of our IT program depends on the quality of people implementing the system," added Babakanian. "This is not just IT. This is a partnership with the entire organization to make things happen for the betterment of our patients and our employees."

Source: University of California San Diego Health System