The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) announced Wednesday the six winners of its 2010 Davies Awards of Excellence, which recognize the use of electronic health records to improve care.

The winners appear below in the four award categories: organizational, ambulatory, community health organization and public health.

HIMSS Organizational Davies Award

• Sentara Healthcare, a not-for-profit, integrated health care system in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, includes eight hospitals, health plans with 415,000 covered lives, and a 400 physician medical group. With approximately 95,000 inpatient admissions per year and 4.2 million outpatient visits per year, Sentara's eCare EHR system provides a single-view access for results retrieval across all environments of care. Sentara Healthcare's highly sophisticated dashboard includes both business and clinical metrics, providing business intelligence that allows for proactive patient care and management of its operations.
• Nemours provides primary and multispecialty ambulatory and inpatient pediatric care, across 34 locations in four states, employing 4,000 associates and 430 physicians, with its flagship hospital, Nemours/Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children (AIDHC), located in Wilmington, Del. The value of its EHR, NemoursOne, "one patient, one record," EHR has been infused throughout its enterprise, driven by its well articulated balanced scorecard methodology.  NemoursOne, in combination with its data warehouse, has developed a streamlined medication reconciliation process, a challenge nationwide, with an outpatient system-wide rate currently at 88 percent.

"The Davies Organizational Award recognizes excellence in the methods for implementation and the value derived from the use of an EHR," says Tom Smith, chair, HIMSS Organizational Davies Award Committee. "The Davies program objectives include promoting the use of EHRs, understanding the value of EHRs and raising visibility of EHRs through sharing successful implementations." Smith is also chief information officer, NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Ill., a 2004 Davies Award winner. "In addition to helping other organizations by documenting best practices, organizations that apply for Davies Awards have a powerful tool for recognizing the effort that the staff of their organization expends to implement and support an EHR."

HIMSS Ambulatory Davies Award

• The Diabetes Center, PLLC is a nurse practitioner-owned private practice located in Ocean Springs, Miss., focused on the treatment on management of patients with diabetes from ages 13 and older. The practice opened on Nov. 1, 2005, as a direct result of Hurricane Katrina, to provide access to care for patients suffering from diabetes who were unable to travel elsewhere. It serves a patient population of a 75-mile radius on the Mississippi Gulf Coast with approximately 125,000 lives in the suburban area. The Diabetes Center actively monitors more than 400 diabetes pumps, digitally downloaded at check-in to become a part of the patient record, leading to optimal treatment and care.
• Miramont Family Medicine in Ft. Collins, Colo., is a six- physician, six mid-level providers, four clinic location practice that embraces the multi-disciplinary team care approach to care, offering a myriad of ancillary services, including three certified laboratories, on-site digital X-ray, prescription dispensing, laser aesthetics, bone densitometry, open access scheduling, on-site physical therapy, mental health and other visiting specialists. Miramont also was recognized in 2009 by NCQA as a Level III Patient Centered Medical Home. Patient processing times were measured before and after EHR implementation, with the percent of "value added time" improving from 64.2 percent to 67.5 percent, resulting in more efficient time spent during the patient/provider visit.

"Decades before our nation's health system reached this critical impasse, many visionaries foresaw the need to bring the practice of medicine into the computer age. Although other awards and certifications recognize how well healthcare organizations are doing in comparison to their peers, the Davies Award, has always recognized, and continues to recognize, them against the possibilities of the future," says Daniel Griffin, MD, chair, HIMSS Davies Ambulatory Committee, and a 2006 Davies Award winner. "As this nation struggles with cost and quality issues relative to healthcare, there is a growing appreciation that – through the use of information technology – we can hope to monitor, understand and improve our health system."

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