PHILADELPHIA – For the eighth consecutive year, Penn Medicine’s Information Services (IS) have been recognized on the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) Healthcare’s Most Wired list. This is the 16th time overall that Penn Medicine IS has made the list, which recognizes hospitals and health systems that embrace and maximize technology to support the delivery of care.
“To be recognized by CHIME and the Most Wired Survey is continued validation of Penn Medicine’s approach to have an integrated EHR platform that supports patient safety and outcomes,” said Michael Restuccia, senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO). “The achievement exemplifies the collaboration and teamwork that exists between our clinical community and Information Services.”
Penn Medicine, as a health system, achieved Digital Health Certified Acute Level 8 status, receiving the Quality Award, meaning that it is among the organizations that “have deployed technologies and strategies…to help them analyze their data and are starting to achieve meaningful clinical and efficiency outcomes,” according to the official designation. Penn Medicine also achieved this status in 2019 for providing and supporting the technologies required to produce high-end, meaningful results in research conducted by faculty in the health system.
“Our teams work together to improve patient care each and every day,” said C. William Hanson III, MD, chief medical information officer. “Together, we are focused on finding ways to make patient care better and to reduce things like physician or provider burnout, which has been a big issue in the last couple years. The work of our clinical and IS teams a use of technology is but one of the ways we’re working toward mitigating this potential burnout.”
More than 30,000 organizations were represented in the 2020 Digital Health Most Wired program. As a participating organization, Penn Medicine’s Information Services team received a customized benchmarking report that provides scores for various segments within the organization, which can then be used to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. Penn Medicine’s IS recognized strengths in Interoperability and Population Health, scoring in the 97th percentile, along with scoring in the 81st percentile for the Administrative and Supply Chain segment.
“This survey provides a benchmark on how we are leveraging data,” Restuccia said. “We want to provide more personalized data to our user community to enhance their decision making with data.”
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.