PHILADELPHIA— Penn Medicine has received a 2018 CIO 100 Award from the CIO division of IDG Communications, Inc. The 31st annual program recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology.
Penn was selected for becoming the first academic medical center in the United States to deploy an integrated electronic patient health record (“PennChart”) across the ambulatory, inpatient, and homecare/hospice settings—moving from paper-based patient charts and records. Electronic records comprise information and test results pertaining to a patient’s medical conditions, procedures, allergies, medications, and immunizations. Among their benefits, they promote a team-based approach to care and provide decision making support, including warning of potential problems, such as inappropriately combining medications, and providing suggestions for the clinical team and patient to consider.
“We are grateful for this honor as further recognition for putting patient care at the forefront of our operations,” said Michael Restuccia, senior vice president and chief information officer. “Providing clinicians and researchers with seamless access to common patient data throughout all of our care settings has enhanced clinical decision-making, patient safety and engagement, quality of care, clinician satisfaction, and the organization’s overall operational efficiencies.”
The project started at Penn Medicine in 2008 using a phased deployment approach, beginning with ambulatory practices in the health system and moving to practice management (physician offices), inpatient settings, and home care, as well as revenue and related services. The phased approach aimed to mitigate risk, address budgetary concerns, and allow users to learn new capabilities while performing their regular duties. Over time, nearly 28,000 employees were trained to prepare for full implementation. The project was completed in 2017.
“PennChart enhances patient care by providing the right information, delivered to the right caregiver and team, in the right location, at the right time,” said Restuccia. “This has empowered our caregivers with an end-to-end comprehensive patient story, improving our ability to collectively care for patients. It advances Penn’s research mission by identifying candidates for clinical trials based on aggregated, de-identified patient data, helping us achieve a 27-percent increase in active clinical trials over the past three years. Also, it encourages patients to participate in their own care by providing access to vital health data, such as cholesterol levels and blood pressure readings, through the patient portal, myPennMedicine, which is accessible in virtually any location.”
Restuccia added that PennChart helped reduce overall costs associated with patient billing activities by fourteen percent and maximizes revenue cycle margins, by such measures as improving charge capture and reconciliation, allowing for reinvestment in the health system. With PennChart, the health system achieved a billing accounts-receivable rate of 29.2 days, eight percent below the industry average. The project also enabled the secure sharing of more than 2.3 million patient records with other health care institutions nationwide.
The complex project relied on a collaborative team approach that blended fifty-percent Penn Medicine information services personnel and fifty-percent operational staff, including physicians, nurses, and other caregivers. Extensive, system-wide training and support programs were central to the initiative. This resulted in a single platform design supporting the requirements of numerous clinical environments in four primary hospitals and other sites, comprising twenty medical specialties and 32 sub-specialty departments. A multi-tiered governance structure coordinated and oversaw the project. As an indication of the scope of the initiative, the project’s centralized command center handled more than 11,000 requests for information and assistance by users in the first 21 days.
In part as a result of successfully implementing PennChart, Penn Medicine is being evaluated for Level 7, the highest electronic-medical-record adoption level issued by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes the best use of information technology and management systems in the health care industry. (Level 7 has been achieved by less than five percent of health systems in the United States.) Additionally, in 2017, Penn Medicine was awarded “Most Wired” status by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine (for the ninth time) for the successful deployment of technology to support patient care.
Executives from the winning companies will be recognized at the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony, to be held August 15 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.