Piedmont Hospital and Piedmont Fayette Hospital Win Most Wired Award

In addition to being Georgia’s only two 100 Top Hospitals® in the nation, Piedmont Hospital and Piedmont Fayette Hospital are among the Most Wired hospitals in the nation according to the 2005 Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study. Most Wired hospitals – those that have invested significantly in health information technology – have lower mortality rates than other hospitals, according to study’s results released in the July issue of Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.

Piedmont Hospital – for the second year in a row – and Piedmont Fayette – for the very first time – were named two of the nation’s Most Wired. In 2003, the Piedmont system was named one of the nation’s 25 Most Improved.

“Piedmont has a 100-year legacy of providing the most advanced healthcare to the community,” said Tim Stack, president and chief executive officer of Piedmont Healthcare. “We are committed to using the latest information technology to improve quality and patient care.”

“There are three key differences in how hospitals apply and use information technology to improve care,” says Alden Solovy, executive editor of Hospitals & Health Networks, the journal of the American Hospital Association (AHA). “The Most Wired use a wider array of IT tools to address quality and safety, they have a significantly larger percentage of physicians who enter orders themselves and they conduct a larger percentage of clinical activities via information technology.”

According to an outcomes analysis conducted for the magazine by Solucient, the 100 Most Wired hospitals have, on average, risk-adjusted mortality rates that are 7.2 percent lower than other hospitals, even after controlling for the size of the hospital and teaching status.

“This is the first analysis showing that the nation’s top tech hospitals also have better outcomes,” Solovy says. The analysis compared mortality results for the 2005 list of Most Wired with the rest of the nation. Solovy cautions that the analysis does not establish a causal relationship between IT and outcomes.

Since 1999, Hospitals & Health Networks has surveyed the nation’s hospitals on their use of information technology to accomplish key goals, including safety and quality objectives. Based on a detailed scoring process, the magazine annually names the 100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems. This year 502 surveys were submitted, representing 1,255 hospitals.

Hospitals & Health Networks conducted the 2005 survey in cooperation with Accenture, IDX Systems Corporation and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). The July H&HN cover story detailing results is available at www.hhnmag.com.

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About Piedmont Healthcare

Piedmont Healthcare, a not-for-profit organization, is the parent company of Piedmont Hospital, named in the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals® list in 2005 and 2002, and a 500-bed acute tertiary care facility in the north Atlanta community of Buckhead, offering all major medical, surgical and diagnostic services; Piedmont Fayette Hospital, a 100-bed acute care community hospital in Fayetteville, also named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® for the second year in a row; Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, a 35-bed community hospital in Jasper; the Piedmont Hospital Foundation; Piedmont Physicians Group, a 74-member primary care physician group with 20 offices throughout metro Atlanta; and the Piedmont Clinic, a 469-member physician network. Piedmont and Piedmont Fayette Hospitals were the only two Georgia hospitals on the 2005 list of 100 Top Hospitals. For more information, visit www.piedmont.org.

About the Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study

Hospitals & Health Networks, the journal of the American Hospital Association, conducts the Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study annually and names the 100 Most Wired. Solucient provides comprehensive, results-oriented information to drive business growth, manage costs, and help deliver quality care. Solucient conducted the mortality analysis. Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. IDX Systems Corporation is a leading provider of software, services and technologies for health care provider organizations. CHIME was formed with the dual objective of serving the professional development needs of healthcare chief information officers and advocating the more effective use of information management within health care.