Yes!  For the second year in a row, NMC was recognized by the Health Forum of the American Hospital Association as one of the nation’s “Most Wired Hospitals” because of our use of technology “to improve the efficiency of care delivery and create a new dynamic in patient interactions.”  This is a particularly noteworthy achievement, as earning the recognition a second year in a row requires continued advancement rather than simply maintaining status quo. This is truly a team award, as our Information Technology professionals, our nurses and physicians, and indeed our entire staff – have shared in the ongoing focus on improvement and innovation which makes this recognition possible.

In the past year, NMC upgraded our Electronic Medical Record system, including full integration with the Emergency Department. We are actually the first hospital in the entire Medent user group (nationally and internationally) to go live with this level of Emergency Department integration!  Our team continues to enhance our firewalls and security monitoring systems to advance our ability to protect our data – including your patient information – in alignment with emerging best practices. We have also invested in data analytics to better identify and report trends in population health. This better enables us to leverage the power of information to improve health and reduce the need for more costly care interventions.

I am proud of the efforts of the entire NMC team to embrace the spirit of the “Most Wired” hospitals in “transforming care delivery with knowledge gained from data and analytics” and “investing in analytics to support new delivery models and effective decision-making and training clinicians on how to use analytics to improve quality, provide access and control costs.”  This has direct benefit to our patients and our providers in that “technology is making it easier for patients and providers to interact, thus improving communication, safety and patient-provider relationships. New tools are helping patients become more actively involved in their care and maintaining their health,”  Our Chief Information, Innovation and Compliance Officer, Joel Benware, says “NMC’s technology initiatives have us on the right path, leading to healthcare reform.  We strive to build highly reliable systems that allow for clinical and business decisions driven by quality data.”

Even with this achievement in consecutive years, our work to improve continues as we strive to use the power of technology as a component of the exceptional care we provide our patients every day.  Joel calls it “a journey” as “we have implemented many advances in technology, and work constantly on developing the next level of innovation for the good of our patients and our providers.”  As we progress our systems will do an even better job of ‘talking to one another’ and helping us create even better access to information for our patients and sharing among providers.

While this is truly a full team honor, I would like to mention that Joel himself was also recently recognized at the national level.  Becker’s Hospital Review (www.beckershospitalreview.com) identified Joel as “one of the top 100 community hospital chief information officers to know” in recognition of the results and achievements made possible through his expertise and leadership.  It is a pleasure to have Joel as part of our Senior Leadership team to help fuel our focus on quality and innovation for the good of our patients, our organization, and our community.

As we advance our technology, we appreciate our patients’ role in the effort.  It can represent changes in our processes and your patience and participation helps those changes become true improvements.  Thank you – and please join me in congratulating NMC’s Information Technology staff and the entire NMC team on this repeated recognition of one of the nation’s “Most Wired” hospitals!

— Jill Berry Bowen, NMC’s Chief Executive Officer