Open Door Family Medical Centers has won the HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence for its work with colorectal cancer screening and health IT. The award will be presented at HIMSS19 in Orlando, Florida, in February.

WHAT HAPPENED

Open Door Family Medical Centers prioritizes early screenings for improved patient outcomes. It aims to help address some of the challenges associated with adhering to colorectal cancer screening guidelines on various levels. For instance, the nature of testing and options can present difficulties for patients.

Additionally, clinicians face the challenge of efficiently balancing screening recommendations with the provision of additional patient needs at the time of an appointment.

In order to address these and other challenges, Open Door worked on improving workflows for screening, with a goal of achieving at least 60 percent compliance. Achieving this goal meant improving the visibility and accessibility of patient data to clinicians.

With this in mind, Open Door created actionable, visual dashboards accessible to all members of the care team, including clinicians. In addition, the electronic health record supported the team’s use of visit planning reports, clinician education, order sets, templates and registries.

WHY IT MATTERS

The third most common form of cancer in both women and men is colorectal cancer. It is also the third leading cause of cancer deaths, though mortality rates have declined over the past two decades.

With its improved workflows for early intervention, Open Door Family Medical Centers was able to meet their goal of improving colorectal cancer screening rates with 60 percent compliance, which led to increased patient and quality incentive revenues.

The organization was able to use the colorectal cancer screening project as a focus for quality improvement at the care team level, involving frontline clinicians, nursing and medical assistant staff, supported by information systems and administration.

In addition, Open Door leverages technology to improve care delivery for underserved children with asthma by providing a high standard of care in local schools For this, HIMSS recognized Open Door as a 2018 HIMSS Davies Community Health Award winner.

THE LARGER TREND

The HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence recognizes outstanding achievement of organizations that have used health information and technology to substantially improve patient outcomes and value.

The award is the pinnacle of the HIMSS Value Recognition Program and highlights organizations promoting health information and technology-enabled improvements in patient and business outcomes through sharing evidence-driven best practices on implementation strategies, workflow design, change management and patient engagement.

Other recent Davies winners in 2018 include Sparrow Health, Duke Health, TriHealth, Mercy Health and Ochsner. All will be recognized at HIMSS19 in Orlando.

ON THE RECORD

“As only the second community health center to be recognized two times by the HIMSS Davies Award Program, Open Door Family Medical Centers has demonstrated a commitment to using information technology to improve the population health of their community,” said Jonathan French, senior director of quality and value-based care at HIMSS. “Open Door leverages registry technology to ensure that the at-risk populations of Westchester County are screened for a variety of cancers and other diseases.”

“We are thrilled and humbled to have Open Door Family Medical Centers recognized for a HIMSS Davies award for the second time in seven years,” said Dr. Daren Wu, Open Door's chief medical officer. “Open Door nurtures an organizational culture that values, invests in and utilizes information systems to support our interdisciplinary care teams in their workflows to advance patient care and population health.”

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com