Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta reaches HIMSS Stage 7 of EMRAM

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, one of the greatest pediatric clinical care providers in the country, has reached HIMSS Stage 7 of Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM), becoming the 1st hospital in Georgia to acquire acute care Stage 7.

The 3-hospital pediatric healthcare system indicated advanced use of information technology (IT) to make better patient care and advanced data analytics capabilities to drive improvements predicting claim for emergency services and patient acuity changes, in accordance to HIMSS Analytics executives.

EMRAM of HIMSS Analytics is a methodology for verifying the progress and affect of electronic health record (EHR) systems at hospitals, which involves 8 stages (0-7) that measure a hospital’s implementation and utilization of information technology to optimize healthcare and the treatment sufferers get.

An Epic electronic health record system (EHR), which was 1st implemented in the year of 2004, integrates research, quality and clinical care components across Children’s several hospital and outpatient facilities in the region of Georgia.

“Particularly in the inpatient space, we’ve been a ground-breaking agency building out in pediatrics Epic content and workflows long before most folks were,” claims Jeremy Meller, vice president of information technology at Children’s. “It has assisted us to build a powerful foundation over time to be capable to execute the more advanced capabilities of Epic, including patient safety such as barcode medication administration.”

Among Children’s technology capabilities, the pediatric provider is capable to capture discrete information into the EHR as well as big data systems to give advanced analytical capabilities to improve care.

“We’ve a complete continuum of capabilities involving population and disease management, where we can take the data and recognize trends in sufferer health status, as well as the capability to integrate external data,” claims Meller.

“One of the regions of predictive analytics we’ve is predicting emergency department volumes,” he further adds. “Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has one of the busiest pediatric emergency departments in the whole country, and it is very significant that we’re capable to precisely predict volumes so that we can give suitable staffing and expertise to look after the patients. We are capable to take in everything from seasonal trends to disease or infection patterns, as well as air quality—which all have an effect.”

As the healthcare industry transitions from fee-for-service to value-based care, Meller asserts that Children’s Healthcare is well positioned to deliver quality care to its sufferers through advanced analytics capabilities.

“Their data analytics are cutting edge,” claims Philip Bradley, regional director in HIMSS Analytics’ healthcare advisory services group.

HIMSS Stage 7 represents the greatest EMRAM level. Only 4.6% of hospitals in the U.S. have acquired Stage 7 and with the designation Children’s Healthcare has become the 1st hospital in Georgia to achieve acute care HIMSS Stage 7.

Children’s Healthcare will be honored next month at the HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition in the place of Orlando, Fla.