Tungs' Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital has been validated for Stage 6 on the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM).

The eight-stage EMRAM measures the adoption and maturity of a health facility's EMR capabilities from 0-7.

WHY IT MATTERS

To achieve the stage 6 accreditation, the 1,200-bed regional teaching hospital implemented closed-loop management for practice and decision support covering the computerised practitioner order entry (CPOE), blood product administration, inpatient and emergency department drug administration, specimens, and human milk administration.

Dr Min-Che Tung, the hospital's chief superintendent, claims that they have seen a number of positive outcomes from this implementation, including error reductions in sample collection, medication, and blood transfusion, among others.  

"After we implemented the closed-loop management system in Tungs' Hospital, we have acknowledged that the higher barcode scan rate, the lesser in-hospital abnormal events," he stressed.

Additionally, Tungs' Hospital has developed an "informative and traceable" process that "significantly improved clinical staff's work efficiency and ensured patient safety," according to Dr Min-Che Tung.

In response to HIMSS' recommendations, Tungs' Hospital is set to replace its paper-based consent forms with electronic forms before June. It will also optimise the inquiry and audit system of its e-consent forms. 

The hospital also disclosed that it will try out four different telemedicine applications for home care, workplace safety and hygiene, emergency, and inter-hospital use. 

"Moving forward, we would like to see Tungs' Hospital's commitment to meet and deliver on their patients' needs, values, and personalised health goals by offering them choices of care delivery, which includes virtual care visits, telehealth, and digitally-enabled self-health management," said Andrew Pearce, VP of Analytics and Global Advisory Lead at HIMSS.

THE LARGER TREND

In 2019, Taiwan as a nation attained Stage 7 EMRAM accreditation. To achieve this, it created an e-hospital and introduced smart medical processes, as well as digital health content to improve patient care. What also enabled it to reach the highest accreditation stage was its use of a clinical decision support system for adjusting doses and the frequency of medication, and a business intelligence dashboard for monitoring fever patients.

Tungs' Hospital's validation follows the same Stage 6 EMRAM award to the Pondok Indah Hospital Group, the first healthcare provider in Indonesia to receive such accreditation. Another hospital in Taiwan that attained Stage 6 accreditation is the Changhua Christian Hospital while both the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and the China Medical University Hospital reached Stage 7. Tungs' Hospital said it also plans to achieve Stage 7 EMRAM in the "near future".

ON THE RECORD

Speaking about their Stage 6 validation experience, Dr Min-Che Tung said: "During the evaluation, we significantly improved our IT system, guaranteeing patient safety. We have developed better digitisation and standardisation of medical records, decision support systems, and file-sharing between hospital clouds."

Dr Tung also noted potential IT improvements after going through the maturity model assessments, including better medical decision-making systems and medical data for clinical application; having complete clinical databases; ensuring full patient protection, achieving medical information standards; EMR integration across institutions; and having the ability to attain continuous medical care in the future.