What Is the Value of a Health IT Award?

As HIMSS announced its 2010 Davies Awards of Excellence winners this week, I wanted to take the opportunity to articulate the value of this health IT award.  The Davies Award program is built upon the structure of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, incorporating the opportunity for healthcare facilities to complete an introspective self-assessment, while simultaneously documenting the planning & ROI of EHR implementations. 

Routinely, I hear from applicants that – regardless of the outcomes of the application process – the value of going through the effort reaps deeply valuable internal rewards such as uncovering opportunities for even greater ROI on health IT.

Davies recipients often leverage their award status to garner additional funding for their facilities – a very high value.  Oftentimes, the individuals responsible for a healthcare facilities’ achievement of a Davies Award find their efforts rewarded internally through a promotion.   Winning entities get to celebrate their success through well-deserved recognition internally, locally, statewide, and nationally. 

And, the Davies Program offers high value to the healthcare sector.   Because the tenets of the Davies Awards Program include sharing successful implementations and documented value of EHR systems, over the years we have assembled a deep well of case studies from which sector-wide best practices can be extrapolated. 

We spend much of our efforts on this portion of the Awards Program, mining the applications for replicable processes, protocols, and approaches and publishing the results in tools and resources.  The power of this compendium of Davies Award recipients has been harnessed by foundations and government entities – which we willingly share – to raise the waters for all.

The evaluation process includes site visits conducted by previous Award winners – those who are truly in the field and taking time from their own hospital, clinical practice, or public health entity.  These dedicated volunteers  assess the real-world experience of applicants, requiring information of how barriers were overcome and what lessons learned were applied to continuously evolve the system. 

The volunteers probe deeply into precisely how an EHR system is used in a setting, asking leaders to walk the Committee through an entire patient experience – literally from registration to billing; every step of the healthcare encounter.  They interview the clinical staff – nurse to nurse, and doc to doc – as well as the administrative staff to clearly understand who is using the system (and who isn’t) and what the impact is.

Personal stories of organizational growth, substantiated by metrics of change and improvement, distinguish this Awards program, as an essential learning vehicle.  The Davies Award examines Management, Functionality, Technology, and Value, and awards improved processes, value, and return on investment including:

• Patient care efficiencies achieved through seamless integration across the continuum of care;
• Clinical decision support within the EHR systems in real-time to make patient care decisions, to meet quality, efficiency and safety goals (e.g., medication reconciliation, decreased average length of stay);
• Demonstration that the system is integral to achieving the organization’s strategic objectives;
• Demonstration that all major clinical areas are using the EHR, through setting, measuring, and achieving clinical, financial, and operational objectives;
• The ability to mine data to produce information for informed and proactive clinical decision-making; and
• Cost savings and return on investment (hard and soft).

I would welcome hearing from you on your journey toward an effective EHR system.  Tell us your story – we’re listening.