For the seventh year, Hospitals & Health Networks has named the 100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems. The list is based on responses to the Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study that asks hospitals to report their use of information technology to address five key areas: safety and quality, customer service, business processes, workforce, and public health and safety. The 2005 survey is a joint project of H&HN, IDX Systems Corp., Accenture and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.
Each year, the survey undergoes an extensive review to identify new questions and to eliminate outdated questions. The survey drafting team conducts an initial review of the survey, eliminating, modifying and creating new questions for comments by survey reviewers. In addition, reviewers are asked to suggest new topic areas for the survey. Based on those comments, the drafting team creates a second version that a broader set of leaders throughout health care then review. The drafting team takes all the comments, evaluates them, modifies questions and finalizes the survey.
Every hospital in the United States received multiple solicitations to participate. The survey was in the field for two months, from mid-January to mid-March. The electronic survey tool includes electronic cross-checks that prevent contradictory answers to related questions. Responses reflect technologies fully implemented as of March 1, 2005. Respondents may complete the survey for an individual hospital or for a health system. Health system respondents are asked to provide estimates of the systemwide averages for each question.
After the survey closes, the editors verify 10 percent of the responses with a follow-up survey. The team chooses the hospitals based on a variety of criteria, including large changes in year-over-year responses and lack of change in year-over-year responses, extremely high scores by new respondents and responses to test questions on the customer service section that appear inconsistent with hospital Web sites. The verifications include both general questions and questions tailored to each organization, which is asked to correct mistakes and to certify respondents' answers.
Each survey was scored using a methodology that emphasizes
the use of IT for patients and customers, with 60 percent of the
points allocated among the three related sections of the survey:
safety and quality, customer service, and public health and safety.
The remaining 40 percent of the points target hospital operational
goals: workforce and business processes. (See figure 9.) The specifics
of the scoring are kept confidential to minimize gaming the results.
Some questions are scored and some are not. The results are the
basis of several annual awards:
As the result of the inherent value judgment in any scoring system, H&HN does not publish the rankings. Each organization completing the survey receives a customized report comparing its responses with the 100 Most Wired organizations.
H&HN also recognizes specific IT acheivements with the Innovator Awards. The Innovator Awards are supported with an additional grant from Cisco. The winners will be profiled in the Summer 2005 edition of H&HN's Most Wired Magazine, which will be mailed in August. For a brief description of the winners, see the inside foldout. All winners will be recognized at the 2005 Health Forum Summit, July 28-30, in San Diego.
This article 1st appeared in the July 2005 issue of HHN Magazine.
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