Four Finalists Announced for HIMSS Ambulatory Care Davies Award

HIMSS has honored 21 ambulatory care practices or clinics since introducing this Davies Award category in 2003

Rather than wait to make an appointment or learn lab results, today’s patients can go online to complete either of these tasks. Physicians may share information via tablet computer during an office visit with improved point of care delivery resulting from the best use of health IT. Leveraging efficiencies of the electronic health record, four independent physician practices have earned the position of finalist for the 2011 HIMSS Ambulatory Care Davies Award of Excellence, a pre-eminent industry award used to educate the industry on best practices.

Learn more about these practices with information below adapted from their application for the award.

Community Care Physicians, LLC, is a 200-provider multi-specialty group located in Latham, NY. With the electronic health record, the practice has experienced decreased chart pulls, lower costs associated with routine tasks and transcription, and the ability to recapture space once filled with paper charts. Community Care has been contributing data to its RHIO for 18 months, as one of the founding board members of Health Information Xchange New York (HIXNY) and has developed an interface that can automatically dump data to state mandated registries.

Fallon Clinic in Worcester, Mass., is a physician-owned and run not-for-profit multispecialty group practice with 357 providers representing 30 specialties located in 23 sites throughout central Massachusetts. Through a carefully planned and broadly inclusive needs assessment, vendor selection, and implementation and optimization of the EHR, Fallon Clinic was able to achieve measurable improvements in the quality, safety, efficiency and satisfaction with healthcare delivery.

James F. Holsinger, MD, FC, opened his solo family medicine practice in Keokuk, Iowa, a rural community of 20,000 in a county with the lowest unemployment rate in the state. The practice started in 2003 with no patients and two part-time visiting specialists renting space in the same building. Now, Dr. Holsinger has 1,400 active patients and is the first fully automated clinic in the area. Profitable in its first 20 months, the practice implemented, and uses in its day-to-day operation, nearly every EHR function and interface available. Dr. Holsinger has participated in Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and e-prescribing incentives and has achieved the highest level of quality in all but one area in its largest commercial insurer’s pay-for-performance program.

Women’s Health Advantage (WHA) is Fort Wayne and Northeast Indiana’s largest OB-GYN practice, serving a population of approximately one million people, with three full-time offices in Fort Wayne and four clinics in outlying communities. One cited improvement in patient care focused on the practice’s EHR tasking system with most wait time eliminated allowing the phone nurses to lower patient on-hold time by 24 percent while handling 44 percent more calls, all with one less phone nurse. The use of e-prescribing, improved coding systems and a patient portal, have also added to streamlined and improved processes with the use of health IT.

“We congratulate each of these finalists for their EHR implementation and ongoing delivery of quality patient care,” said Daniel Griffin, MD, chair of the HIMSS Ambulatory Care Davies Award Committee, and past Davies winner.  “We look forward to the next step in our award process, which includes a site visit team observing workflow and system use by various providers at each of the four ambulatory care finalists for the HIMSS Davies Award.” Dr. Griffin also explained that winners would be selected by the committee who will vote following completion of the site visits.  Up to four winners will be announced in September.

Contact David A. Collins, MHA, CPHQ, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, Director, Healthcare Information Systems, HIMSS, at dcollins@himss.org, for more information on the award application process. Since guidelines and deadlines vary for each award, visit the HIMSS website at http://www.himss.org/davies for more information.

Background on the HIMSS Davies Awards of Excellence:

The HIMSS Ambulatory Care Davies Award of Excellence is designed to recognize the most exemplary implementations and utilizations of electronic health records in independent ambulatory practices.

•Applicants must be independent, physician-owned (not hospital-owned) ambulatory practices and must have leveraged technology to impact patient-centric practice of medicine and derived value.

•The four categories of the HIMSS Davies Awards program are: hospitals and health systems, independent physician practices, public health, and community health organizations.

•Each winner has successfully achieved value from electronic health records to improve healthcare delivery.

About HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence
The HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence recognizes excellence in the implementation and use of health information technology, specifically electronic health records (EHRs), for healthcare organizations, private practices, public health systems, and community health organizations.  Created by CPRI-HOST in 1994, the first three recipients of the Davies Organizational Award were recognized in 1995.  In 2002, CPRI-HOST merged with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and now, HIMSS manages the award program.  The Award honors Dr. Nicholas E. Davies, an Atlanta-based practicing physician, president-elect of the American College of Physicians, and a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Improving the Patient Record, who died in 1991 in a plane crash. Visit www.himss.org/davies for more information, including educational resources.

   

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