Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Receive Global Accolades for Use of Health Information Technology

For Release: September 21, 2017

CHICAGO —Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford have been awarded the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2017 Enterprise Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence for outstanding achievement in utilizing health information technology to improve patient outcomes. Since 1994, this award has represented HIMSS’ highest global recognition of health care organizations’ use of information technology to achieve better clinical and financial outcomes.

“This is a significant milestone for Stanford Medicine Children’s Health,” stated Christopher G. Dawes, president and chief executive officer of Packard Children’s and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “We are honored to be recognized for our accomplishments in advancing care for children and expectant mothers, which are achieved through excellent partnerships with our clinicians and leveraging innovative health information technologies and data analytics.”

Led by Ed Kopetsky, chief information officer, and Natalie Pageler, MD, chief medical information officer, representatives from Stanford Medicine Children’s Health’s Information Services and Clinical Informatics teams presented case studies to HIMSS demonstrating the organization’s use of technology to improve implementation strategies, workflow design, adherence to best practices and patient engagement. The case studies presented Stanford Medicine Children’s Health’s innovative use of technology in the following three programs:

• The prevention of nephrotoxic acute kidney injury (AKI) in hospitalized children. Young patients who are required to take more than three nephrotoxin medications are identified through the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) system so they can be monitored. Pharmacists and care teams then use this dosing information on rounds to tailor treatment to each patient in order to prevent kidney failure. To date, this intervention has reduced nephrotoxin exposure rates by 39 percent.
• Safety interventions for medication administration. Moving from a daily medication cart fill (once every 24 hours) to multiple fills per day (every 2 to 3 hours) and implementing a bar code verification system for all medication dispensing has resulted in a 21 percent decrease in missed doses, a 66 percent reduction in wasted doses and one of the lowest medication error rates according to incident reporting in the Solutions for Patient Safety collaborative.
• Improved care for patients with congenital heart disease through the Clinical Effectiveness program. The program uses a data-driven and data-transparent approach to securely collect information from electronic health records (EHR) in order to inform clinicians about the experiences of other patients in the recent past with the same heart condition and to aid physicians and nurses in standardizing and improving care for patients. The program resulted in a 34 percent decrease in post-operative length of stay and, annually, has saved nearly 300 hospital days.

"The close collaboration and integration between the Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Information Services team and clinical leadership, with our collective goal of improving health outcomes for children and expectant mothers, is a key factor in our successful adoption of health information technology,” Kopetsky said.

“Stanford Medicine Children’s Health has worked diligently to improve patient care in various aspects, such as medication administration safety interventions, prevention of nephrotoxic kidney injuries (AKI), and improvements in care for congenital heart defects,” stated Jonathan French, CPHIMS, senior director, quality and patient safety, and director, Davies Award of Excellence Program, HIMSS. “In utilizing their clinical effectiveness program to maintain focus on positive patient outcomes, they have displayed strong commitment to setting and accomplishing their organization’s goals. HIMSS congratulates the team members of Stanford Medicine Children’s Health on being selected as a 2017 HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award Recipient.”

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health will be recognized at the HIMSS18 Awards Gala on Thursday, March 8, 2018, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Media Contact:

Kate DeTrempe
(650) 721-8527
kdetrempe@stanfordchildrens.org