Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Named One of 2017’s Most Wired

For Release: July 13, 2017

CHICAGO— Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health have been recognized as one of Health Care’s Most Wired® hospitals for 2017.

New tools are helping patients become more actively involved in their care and maintaining their health, according to results of the nineteenth annual “Health Care’s Most Wired” survey, released this week by the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Health Forum.

The 2017 Most Wired survey and benchmarking study is a leading industry barometer measuring information technology (IT) use and adoption among hospitals nationwide. The survey of 698 participants, representing an estimated 2,158 hospitals, examines how organizations are leveraging IT to improve performance for value-based health care in the areas of infrastructure, business and administrative management, quality and safety, and clinical integration.

“We are honored to be recognized, for the third year in a row, as a Most Wired hospital,” said Ed Kopetsky, chief information officer at Packard Children's and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “We attribute our success to outstanding collaboration between our organization’s Information Services team and clinical leadership, and our collective dedication to advancing patient care.”

According to the survey, Most Wired hospitals are using smart phones, telehealth and remote monitoring to create more ways for patients to access health care services and capture health information. At Packard Children’s, patients can stay connected to their clinicians from home in a variety of ways. Using an online portal, patients can request the release of medical records, schedule appointments, send secure messages, and more. There are also condition-specific mobile apps that record patient-generated data in real time. For example, physicians at the Moore Children’s Heart Center at Packard Children’s, in collaboration with the Stanford Clinical Informatics Fellowship program, have implemented the use of a mobile app for infants who have single ventricle heart defects that allows vital signs recorded at home to be uploaded to the patient’s electronic health record for review by the cardiology team. Monitoring these parameters helps physicians to determine the timing of subsequent cardiac surgeries.

In addition, Most Wired hospitals are transforming care delivery with knowledge gained from data and analytics. At Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, data collected from the electronic health record (EHR) is being leveraged to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care by providing caregivers access to the right information at the right point in their workflow.

“At Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, we are using analytics to provide meaningful information for physicians to improve clinical decision-making and personalize care for our patients,” said Natalie Pageler, MD, chief medical information officer at Packard Children’s and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “We are continually collecting data through the care we provide, and we are able to analyze this information to continuously evolve and build decision-making support tools to provide the best clinical recommendations possible for our patients.”

“The Most Wired hospitals are using every available technology option to create more ways to reach their patients in order to provide access to care,” said AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack. “They are transforming care delivery and investing in new delivery models in order to improve quality, provide access and control costs.”

Health Care’s Most Wired® survey, conducted between January 15 and March 15, 2017, is published annually by Hospitals & Health Networks (H&HN) magazine. Detailed results of the survey and study can be found in the July issue of H&HN. For a full list of winners, visit www.hhnmag.com.

About the Most Wired survey

The 2017 Most Wired Survey is conducted in cooperation with the American Hospital Association and Clearwater Compliance, LLC.

About the American Hospital Association

The AHA is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the improvement of health in their communities. The AHA is the national advocate for its members, which include nearly 5,000 hospitals, health care systems, networks and other providers of care. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. For more information, visit www.aha.org.

About Health Forum

Health Forum is a strategic business enterprise of the American Hospital Association, creatively partnering to develop and deliver essential information and innovative services to help health care leaders achieve organizational performance excellence and sustainability. For more information, visit www.healthforum.com.

About Clearwater Compliance, LLC

Clearwater Compliance, LLC is a leading provider of healthcare compliance and cyber risk management solutions. Its mission is to empower hospitals and health systems to successfully manage healthcare’s evolving cybersecurity risks and ensure patient safety. Exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association, Clearwater solutions have been deployed within hundreds of hospitals and health systems, Fortune 100 organizations and federal government institutions.