The results of the Most Wired survey tend to reflect positively on the overall image of the hospitals making the list, said Turner Billingsley, MD, of the McKesson Corp., which partners with Accenture, the American Hospital Association and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives to support the survey.

Alden Solovy, editor of Hospitals & Health Networks, defended the data in the Most Wired survey, while acknowledging that there might be room for criticism.

“If there is a weakness in the survey, it’s that we have combined an awards program with a benchmark,” he said. “But the survey wouldn’t have reached the visibility it has without the awards and ranking aspect. The numbers assigned to the hospitals represent the differences between organizations – they don’t represent anything ‘real.’ And we do use verifications to try to take the gaming out of the responses.”

“Hospital executives like this survey because it’s a good marketing tool,” one physician said. Another attendee agreed, suggesting that hospitals only participate in the survey because they know that it can be used for marketing purposes.

Paul Clark, MD, an internist and member of the clinical informatics team at Concord Hospital in Concord, N.H., said that while it is probably true that information technology is necessary for clinical improvements, it is not sufficient, and more evidence linking IT use and quality improvement was necessary.

“Information technology alone does not transform care,” Clark said. “There is a danger in interpreting this survey in a way that suggests that IT led to these results. What really makes the difference is having an institutional focus on transformation.”