St. Clair Hospital of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a 328-bed acute care facility has been named a 2014 HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award recipient.

St. Clair has shown a broad range of significant benefits through the use of IT and improved care while serving a patient population that includes a large ratio of Medicare patients, according to the HIMSS Davies Award team. It has done so while serving a large population of Medicare patients.

[See also: How one hospital landed a Davies Award.]

An example of health IT implementation success at St. Clair Hospital comes with the introduction of improved patient flow for patient registration in the emergency department. This new workflow protocol included an ED status board and associated analytics, computer provider order entry, electronic documentation and an electronic bed management system.

In the first year after the introduction of these changes,

• Waiting room times decreased from 49 to 4 minutes;
• Time to see a physician decreased from 76 to 28 minutes; and
• Patient satisfaction scores increased from the 14^th to the 99^th percentile with these two changes in the ED.

In addition, St. Clair Hospital reported other accomplishments:

• Provided pneumonia vaccinations, since December 2012, to nearly 100 percent of at-risk inpatients;                 
• Avoided an average of 1,100 preventable medication errors per year since 2004;
• The hospital developed and implemented real-time automated charting for medication administration with dual-scanning technology that included barcoding and RFID;
• Generated incremental net revenue improvements over each prior year, through advancements in recovery of underpayments, increases in collections and reduced denials.

These achievements result from better use of the integrated EHR suite plus the patient accounting and scheduling systems.

Read the Davies Awards case studies on health IT implementation success submitted by St. Clair Hospital.

Since 1994, the HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence has recognized outstanding achievement of organizations that have utilized health information technology to substantially improve patient outcomes while achieving return on investment.

St. Clair Hospital will present its story and receive the Davies Award at HIMSS15, April 12-16 in Chicago. 

[See also: HITN@HIMSS15 starts daily conference coverage.]