Dallas children's hospital wins Davies award for EHR use

Children's Medical Center, Dallas, is a 2013 winner of the HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence for hospitals and health systems using health information technology, the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society announced.

The 442-bed hospital, which leveraged its electronic health-records system by developing sets of embedded clinical pathways and computer-assisted workflows to improve patient care, will be formally recognized Feb. 23-27 at the 2014 HIMSS convention in Orlando, Fla.

“Through the use of the EHR, Children's has been able to innovate care delivery, improve efficiency and workflows, and develop patient and family engagement strategies that support our philosophy of whole family care,” Pamela Arora, VP and chief information officer at Children's Medical Center, said in a news release. “This award is a testament to the dedication of our physicians, clinicians and staff who work daily to fulfill our mission of making life better for children.”

Janis Curtis, associate CIO at Duke University Health System, who chaired the Davies committee for the enterprise level of the award, said “the use of clinical pathways in pediatric care processes is 'unchartered waters' to a certain extent.”

“What Children's has done in this regard, and the positive clinical outcomes achieved, is indeed commendable,” Curtis said.

Texas Health Resources and UC Davis Medical Center were named earlier as 2013 Davies enterprise award winners, and the six-physician White River Family Practice won a Davies for ambulatory care.

The Davies Awards are named after health IT pioneer Dr. Nicholas Davies, who was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Improving the Patient Record. Davies was president-elect of the American College of Physicians when he was killed in a plane crash in 1991.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn