EMRAM Stage 6 and 7 Hospitals Targeting Specific Benefits More Likely to See Measurable Success

CHICAGO (February 29, 2012) – New research from HIMSS Analytics and The Advisory Board shows that hospitals with advanced electronic medical records (EMR) systems report achieving a broad range of benefits from their implementations, including clinical quality, patient safety and operational efficiencies.

The data collected for the report, EMR Benefits and Benefit Realization Methods of Stage 6 and 7 Hospitals, indicates that highly advanced EMR environments can produce substantial benefits for individual hospitals and the healthcare system as a whole. The survey is the first to report results from hospitals that have achieved Stages 6 or Stage 7 on the EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM)SM , providing unique insight into how ERM systems are working for hospitals further along the development track.

The study collected data from 33 chief information officers (CIOs) at Stage 6 or Stage 7 EMRAM hospitals from throughout the country.  The following are the key findings from the HIMSS Analytics and The Advisory Board report:

Hospitals with advanced EMRs explicitly target specific clinical objectives.  At least half of respondents targeted improvements in quality measures for venous thromboembolism (VTE) (73 percent), stroke (70 percent), congestive heart failure (CHF) (64 percent), pneumonia (61 percent), acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (55 percent), and surgical (52 percent) patients. With regard to general safety measures, the vast majority of respondents targeted their EMR implementations to reduce Adverse Drug Effects (ADE) (94 percent) and other safety indicators (91 percent).

Hospitals with advanced EMRs report achieving a broad range of benefits from their EMR implementations.  All respondent hospitals indicated having realized and documented at least one core measure benefit and one safety measure benefit from EMR implementation.  More than three-quarters (79 percent) of the respondent hospitals reported multiple core measure and/or safety benefits.  The most commonly reported benefits were again ADE reduction (73 percent), improvements in other patient safety indicators (58 percent), and improvements in VTE (55 percent) and CHF (48 percent) metrics.

Hospitals that target specific areas of benefit are more likely to report achieving those benefits. Hospitals that targeted specific quality benefits were reportedly much more successful in realizing those benefits. Over three quarters of hospitals that targeted improvements in pediatric asthma, pregnancy, AMI, CHF and VTE reported achieving those improvements, compared to 0 – 17 percent of those that didn’t target these conditions.

With regard to the safety measures, hospitals that targeted specific improvements were also much more likely to report achieving those improvements, with the sole exception being ADE reductions. Over three-quarters (77 percent) of the hospitals that targeted ADE reductions reported they had achieved some reductions, as did both of the two hospitals that did not target ADE reductions.

In addition to the clinical benefits, hospitals reported achieving a number of other operational and administrative benefits as detailed below:

“It is extremely encouraging to see the majority of hospitals that are in the latter stages of developing full EMRs, reporting tangible, diverse and numerous benefits and showing that these systems are transforming healthcare,” said Jennifer Horowitz, senior director, research, HIMSS Analytics.

About the Survey

• E-mail surveys were sent in November and December, 2011, to the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of approximately 180 hospitals, or hospital systems with one or more hospitals having achieved Stage 6 or Stage 7 status in the HIMSS Analytics EMRAM database. A total of 33 surveys (18 percent) were completed and returned representing a variety of hospitals; six from Stage 7 hospitals and 27 from Stage 6 hospitals.  The average bed size of responding hospitals is 376, with a minimum of 25 and a maximum of nearly 900.