St Clair Hospital in Mt Lebanon, Pa, has earned the 2014 HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award for substantial use of information technology to improve patient outcomes and achieve a return on investment. The 328-bed acute care facility serves 500,000 residents in southwestern Pennsylvania, including a large percentage of Medicare patients.

“St. Clair has significantly reduced hospital acquired infections and medication errors through the innovative use of IT,” said Jonathan French, director of quality and patient safety, HIMSS North America. “As a hospital that serves a large Medicare population, improved clinical outcomes have resulted in revenue capture and costs savings critical for the organization’s financial health. The Davies Committee and HIMSS congratulate the St. Clair Hospital team for its focus on improving the health outcomes of their patient population through the effective use of health IT.”

Among other changes, the hospital implemented an ED status board, computer provider order entry, electronic documentation, and an electronic bed management system to improve patient registration workflow. Within one year, waiting room times dropped from 49 to 4 minutes, time to see a physician decreased from 76 to 28 minutes, and patient satisfaction jumped from the 14th to the 99th percentile. Other key achievements include delivering pneumonia vaccinations to almost 100% of at-risk patients since December 2012 and reducing C. difficile incidents by 50% since December 2013.

“We’ve had a long-term concentrated focus to better serve our patients through the use of systems and technology that enable us to deliver safer, higher quality care,” said Richard J. Schaeffer, vice president and chief information officer of St. Clair Hospital. “We are honored to receive the Davies Award, because it reinforces our strategy of investing in technology that can be embraced with an organizational mindset that the system will be improved on a continuous basis.”

St Clair Hospital will receive the Davies award at the HIMSS 2015 annual meeting April 12-16 in Chicago. This overview of St Clair’s case studies outlines the facility’s achievements.

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