The HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption ModelSM (EMRAM) score allows Ontario’s acute care hospitals to compare their eHealth adoption rates with both their peers within the province and with US hospitals that also provide similar data. This kind of benchmarking permits better understanding of Ontario’s pace in integrating information technology to the delivery of health care relative to some of the most sophisticated hospitals in the world.
For example, comparison of current EMRAM data from HIMSS Analytics reveals that Ontario’s medium and large size hospitals (those with more than 4,000 annual weighted cases) are close to being on par with the levels of eHealth adoption in American hospitals. At the same time, Ontario’s smaller hospitals (those with below 4,000 weighted cases) have adopted less eHealth than their counterparts in both the US and in Ontario’s larger facilities. The comparison is encouraging for medium to larger Ontario hospitals as it confirms that the investments and efforts being made in Ontario are on pace with our American peers. At the same time, it highlights the challenge for Ontario’s smaller hospitals as they seek to keep pace with progress in other peer groups.
Although the EMRAMSM score focuses on clinical functionality within a hospital, as opposed to data sharing and integration functions, it nonetheless provides a useful picture of how Ontario hospitals are doing relative to an external benchmark. As the public increasingly seeks to understand how eHealth is being used to improve health care in Ontario, the significant accomplishments of hospitals should continue to be highlighted. While there are still many untapped opportunities for eHealth in Ontario hospitals, much is being accomplished every day.
Building on the existing foundation of eHealth functionality within hospitals is very important to achieving both a shared electronic health record and an integrated health system. Along with eHealth Ontario, hospitals and LHINs should continue pressing ahead, leveraging the progress that’s been made with data sharing capacity across providers and thus enabling system transformation for better quality, efficiency and access.
Comprehensive, accurate information about Ontario’s eHealth readiness is critical to understanding the progress that has been made to date and to uncover opportunities that can leverage existing systems or knowledge. To help report detailed comparative data on hospitals’ eHealth adoption, the OHA has been collecting an inventory of hospitals’ eHealth technologies and applications in partnership with HIMSS Analytics, a leading health care data research organization. Based on the data the OHA has collected, HIMSS Analytics has been able to produce the EMRAMSM score (for Ontario hospitals that have provided sufficient information to the OHA). For more information on the HIMSS Analytics EMRAMSM score methodology, click here.
To ensure hospitals get the maximum benefit from their participation in the data collection and aggregation effort, the OHA has made this rich data set available through a secure section of its website. Participating hospitals can use the eHealth Applications Viewer to query the eHealth application data, indices (like the EMRAMSM score), along with other relevant facts and figures. It empowers hospitals to perform their own data analysis and to benchmark themselves against their peers by whatever measure they choose, providing a platform for tracking success and identifying opportunities for improvement, while helping system planners to better understand how far we have come and how best to move forward.