March 11, 2008 - Citizens Memorial Healthcare in Bolivar, MO and St. Agnes Healthcare in Baltimore recently received the prestigious Stage 6 Electronic Medical Record (EMR) adoption recognition from HIMSS Analytics.
Both hospitals have implemented EMRs from Medical Information Technology Inc. (MEDITECH). This achievement has been earned by only 0.1 percent of hospitals in the U.S., due to the rigorous criteria for the HIMSS Analytics recognition. Those healthcare facilities that reach Stage 6 have made significant executive commitments and investments in regards to their healthcare IT progress and are almost completely automated utilizing paperless medical records.
“Stage 6 hospitals are best prepared for many of the market transformations that hospitals will be exposed to over the next five to 10 years,” explained Ken McCormick, I.S. director for St. Agnes. “These transformations include pay-for-performance, government reporting, and employer-consumer driven healthcare.”
The HIMSS Analytics group developed its hospital Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) in 2005 to score healthcare facility IT deployment progress in seven stages, based on data from the HIMSS Analytics Database. HIMSS Analytics receives information from those hospitals that participate in the EMRAM study, and then assigns benchmarks to those hospitals. Most hospitals have achieved only Stage 1, 2, or 3. One of the top stages, Stage 5, is the closed loop medication stage requiring CPOE, a pharmacy management system, and an electronic medication administration record with either bar coding or radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to ensure the Five Rights of medication administration are executed and monitored via automation.
Citizens Memorial and St. Agnes both credit their success and recognition from HIMSS Analytics to the integration of the MEDITECH system, which has provided a foundation from which to move forward in patient safety and interoperability goals. Citizens Memorial has 100 percent electronic records for all patients, across their acute care hospital, long-term care facilities, home health agencies, and physician offices. St. Agnes is currently 90 percent electronic and is working toward a completely paperless system.
For more information: www.meditech.com
March 14, 2024 
