CHICAGO – The UC San Diego Health System has been recognized by HIMSS Analytics for reaching Stage 7 – the highest level on its EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM).

The HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 Award honors hospitals that operate in a paperless environment and represent best practices in implementation of an electronic medical record.

“UC San Diego Health System is delighted and honored to be designated as a Stage 7 Health System. We appreciate HIMSS Analytics' leadership and energy in focusing national attention on the importance of leveraging technology to help improve healthcare delivery across the country,” said Edward Babakanian, chief information officer at the University of California's San Diego Health Sciences. “At UC San Diego Health System, we have a tradition of using information technology to help our care teams further improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care that we provide every day.”

The UC San Diego Health Sciences is one of 58 hospitals – or 1.1 percent of the more than 5,000 hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics Database – to be recognized by HIMSS Analytics with its Stage 7 Award.

The validation process that confirms a hospital has reached Stage 7 includes a site visit conducted by an executive from HIMSS Analytics and former or current CIOs to ensure an unbiased evaluation of the Stage 7 environments.

“Congratulations to UC San Diego Health System for earning the Stage 7 award,” said John P. Hoyt, executive vice president of organizational services for HIMSS. “As the first of the five University of California health sciences systems to receive the award, UC San Diego deserves recognition for implementation of the electronic health record across its healthcare enterprise."

"During our site visit, our team was impressed with the medical staff’s successful deployment of health IT, with a majority of physicians truly engaged with and using the technology in this interactive and safety-focused environment,” he added.

The UC San Diego Health System was launched in 1966 and now has 5,505 employees, with an annual patient volume of more than 536,000. The system includes the UC San Diego Medical Center, UC San Diego Thornton Hospital, UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center and UC San Diego Shiley Eye Center, as well as primary and specialty practices of UC San Diego Medical Group faculty physicians. The two hospitals, UC San Diego Medical Center and Thornton Hospital, operate under one license, with a combined licensed capacity of nearly 560 beds.

The health system and other San Diego-based healthcare provider-partners received a $15 million Beacon Community Collaborative award in 2010, one of only 17 such collaboratives nationwide. The Beacon group will use the money to pilot the wide-scale use of health information technology and health information exchanges (HIE) to improve quality of care and efficiency.

The hospital will be recognized at the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition on Feb. 21-24, 2012, in Las Vegas.

HIMSS Analytics developed the EMR Adoption Model in 2005 as a method for evaluating the progress and impact of EMR systems for hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics Database. Tracking their progress in stages  from 0 to 7, hospitals can review the implementation and use of information technology applications with the intent of reaching Stage 7, which represents an advanced patient record environment.