UC San Diego Health System Honored with HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 Award

UC San Diego Health System began in 1966 and now has 5,505 employees with a patient volume of more than 536,000 annually. The system of patient services providers includes  UC San Diego Medical Center; UC San Diego Thornton Hospital; UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center; UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center; UC San Diego Shiley Eye Center; as well as primary and specialty practices of UC San Diego Medical Group faculty physicians. The two hospitals, UC San Diego Medical Center and Thornton Hospital, operate under one license, with a combined licensed capacity of nearly 560 beds.  The health system ranks as the top health system in San Diego in U.S. News & World Report’s  “Best Hospitals” metro rankings.

UC San Diego Health System and other San Diego-based health care provider-partners received a $15 million Beacon Community Collaborative award in 2010, one of only 17 such collaboratives nationwide.  The San Diego Beacon group will pilot the wide-scale use of health information technology and health information exchanges (HIE) to improve quality of care and efficiency.

“UC San Diego Health System is delighted and honored to be designated as a Stage 7 Health System.  We appreciate HIMSS Analytics leadership and energy in focusing national attention on the importance of leveraging technology to help improve health care delivery across the country,” said Edward Babakanian, Chief Information Officer, University of California, San Diego Health Sciences. “At UC San Diego Health System, we have a tradition of using information technology to help our care teams further improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care that we provide every day.”

HIMSS Analytics developed the EMR Adoption Model in 2005 as a methodology for evaluating the progress and impact of electronic medical record systems for hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics™ Database.  Tracking their progress in completing eight stages (0-7), hospitals can review the implementation and utilization of information technology applications with the intent of reaching Stage 7, which represents an advanced patient record environment. The validation process that confirms a hospital has reached Stage 7 includes a site visit conducted by an executive from HIMSS Analytics and former or current CIOs to ensure an unbiased evaluation of the Stage 7 environments.

“Congratulations to UC San Diego Health System for earning the Stage 7 award,” said John P. Hoyt, FACHE, FHIMSS, Executive Vice President, Organizational Services, for HIMSS.  “As the first of the five University of California health sciences systems to receive the award, UC San Diego deserves recognition for implementation of the electronic health record across its healthcare enterprise. During our site visit, our team was impressed with the medical staff’s successful deployment of health IT with a majority of physicians truly engaged with and using the technology in this interactive and safety-focused environment.”

Visit the HIMSS Analytics Web site for more information on the Stage 7 award.  Find out more about HIMSS12.

Launched in 1966, UC San Diego Health System is the region’s only academic health system, with a mission of providing excellent and compassionate patient care, advancing medical discoveries and educating future health care professionals. It comprises UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest, and UC San Diego Thornton Hospital, Moores Cancer Center, Shiley Eye Center, Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center and Jacobs Medical Center (slated to open in 2015) in La Jolla, as well as other primary and specialty practices of UC San Diego Medical Group.  For more information, visit health.ucsd.edu.

HIMSS Analytics is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The company collects and analyzes healthcare data related to IT processes and environments, products, IS department composition and costs, IS department management metrics, healthcare trends and purchase-related decisions. HIMSS Analytics delivers high quality data and analytical expertise to healthcare delivery organizations, healthcare IT companies, state governments, financial companies, pharmaceutical companies, and consulting firms.  Visit www.himssanalytics.org/ for more information.