Academic medical centers make up nearly one-third of the 2007 Most Wired hospitals and health systems, and their responses to the survey reveal that their information technology priorities don’t necessarily align with their nonacademic peers.

Academic medical centers (members of the Council of Teaching Hospitals of the Association of American Medical Colleges) are pursuing the quality and safety benefits of computerized provider order entry and automated medication reconciliation more aggressively than both the Most Wired as a whole and the least wired. Most Wired academics have a greater number of physicians electronically entering orders than the Most Wired, and even the less wired academics nearly match the Most Wired hospitals’ physician usage. In addition, every Most Wired academic medical center uses IT to develop a list of current medications and provide new medication lists to patients and their caregivers. While academics benefit from having a greater percentage of employed physicians and residents, they clearly have put CPOE and automated medication reconciliation among their top priorities.

When it comes to revenue cycle management, Most Wired academic medical centers only slightly lag behind the Most Wired. Less wired academics, however, show a troubling distance from both the Most Wired in general and Most Wired academics in automating charge and order matching, charge capture reconciliation and medical necessity checks. While this group still performs better than the least wired in these categories, automating these transactions appears to be taking a backseat to other projects. The business office is where many hospitals are finding the resources to invest in IT; neglecting it will shortchange these institutions in the long run.

*Most Wired: Aggregate data for the 100 highest scoring respondents; **Least Wired: Aggregate data for the 100 lowest scoring respondents; ***Most Wired Academic: Aggregate data for 31 Most Wired Academic Medical Centers; ****Less Wired Academic: Aggregate data for 53 Academic Medical Centers that are not Most Wired; Source: H&HN’s Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study, 2007

This article first appeared in the Summer issue of HHN's Most Wired Magazine.

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