Camden Clark Medical Center recognized for IT advances

PARKERSBURG -- The Camden Clark Medical Center is one of several hospitals statewide that have been recognized for their advances in health care information technology (IT).

Camden Clark, which is part of WVU Medicine-WVU Hospitals, was named a winner in the 19th annual Health Care's Most Wired survey, released by the American Hospital Association's (AHA) Health Forum and published in Hospitals & Health Networks, the journal of the AHA.

The winners are considered ahead of the curve in infrastructure, business and administrative management, quality and safety and clinical integration.

"WVU Medicine has made significant investments in the technology behind our patient care to stay at the front of industry standards and best practices," said Jim Venturella, vice president and chief information officer of WVU Medicine.

"We see technology as a way to improve the quality of care. It's good to see our commitment and the hard work of our IT professionals be recognized by leading industry organizations."

This was Camden Clark's first time ranking in the top 100 on the survey since 2008.

Hospitals throughout the country are surveyed on how they use technology in conjunction with their services, including use of the electronic medical record (EMR), patient portals and tele-medicine initiatives, said Josh Woods, Camden Clark's IT director.

''They assign us grades based on how much we use technology in conjunction with our hospital services,'' he said.

Woods said Camden Clark has won this award three times in the past, the last time in the late 2000s when they were on their Meditech platform. They then went through a hiatus when they went through EMR to the All Scripts EMR.

''It took us a long time to build up our work flows and…get our usage in its entirety where it needed to be,'' he said. ''In this last year, we have brought on some new back office applications, payroll applications and things like that which has increased our automation.''

The applications help employees better control aspects of their files themselves.

Physicians are entering their orders at an 80 percent rate electronically.

Before it was a process where doctors told a nurse and placed it into the computer system.

''Our physicians are now going in and interacting with that electronic medical record far more frequently on their own,'' Woods said. ''They found it is a lot easier to go in and place those sort of activities on their own.

''This last year, we have also incorporated some physician documentation. We have a lot of automation that has become part of the normal course of the patient's stay. Lab results, nurses notes (and more) gets pulled into this documentation.''

It is helping to increase efficiency for physicians in treating their patients.

The patient portal has allowed people to be able to quickly access test results of which around 15 percent of their patients have signed up for access to that.

They have utilized it, not only to review their own results, but so doctors they may be seeing elsewhere can also look at them to get the most up-to-date information about treatments their patients have received, whether it is someone passing through the area who may need treatment or a patient at one of the family practice locations in the community as well as what happens in the hospital.

''There is no gaps in communication,'' Woods said. ''You don't have to go to two different places to see your entire medical history. It is all encapsulated in a single environment.''

WVU Medicine is in the midst of a nearly two-year project to implement Epic electronic medical record system-wide with Camden Clark and others going to that this fall. MyWVUChart, WVU Medicine's online patient portal through Epic, will also become available to patients anywhere in the system.

Patients will be able to view their medical records, prescriptions, and test results from all WVU Medicine clinics or hospitals, as well as schedule appointments, request prescription refills, and pay bills, in one convenient place.

''It is going to be a huge investment in time and energy,'' Woods said. ''The benefit to the patient is there will be one consolidated health record across all of the WVU Health System hospitals, regardless of where you are in the state.

''It will give us a lot of information on our patients to better serve them. It will improve communication and efficiency.''

Camden Clark also achieved Stage 6 on the EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM) developed by HIMSS Analytics.

The EMRAM evaluates the progress and impact of electronic medical record systems for hospitals. It tracks progress through eight stages (0-7) of implementation and utilization of IT applications. Stage 6 is the final stage before achieving an advanced electronic patient record environment. Once the Epic system is in place, Woods expects Camden Clark to reach level 7 within a few months.

The upgrades and improvements to their computer system go to continually help the patients, Camden Clark Marketing Director Roger Lockhart said.

''The end result is about how we are improving patient care,'' he said.