"Why is it nearly impossible to get useful data from our IT system?"

This question is asked of us time and again, usually with a tone of weary frustration. Severely limited access to clinical data is the ongoing legacy of, well, legacy computer systems at hospitals across the country.

Meditech's value proposition has always centered on the fact that the Meditech system requires no extra personnel to run it, that the system runs "out of the box". For resource constrained hospitals, this efficiency-and cost-effectiveness-can be crucial.

But pulling useful data from that same system requires combinations of expertise, not usually found within leading acute care hospitals.

That expertise is what the Institute for Health Metrics is all about, which is why we're thrilled that Meditech saw fit to establish an alliance with us. That piece of news is why we thought to begin keeping in touch with leaders of Meditech hospitals with this e-newsletter. We'd be pleased to hear from you and look forward to seeing you at HIMSS; please be sure to visit with us at the Meditech booth.

John H. Knowles, Jr.
Executive Director
jknowles@healthmetrics.org

IHM Announces MEDITECH Alliance

"We are thrilled that Meditech has confirmed IHM's unique capabilities in helping their customers derive robust, useful data from the Meditech system," says John Knowles, IHM's Executive Director. "Meditech hospitals are, by definition, leaders and we are honored to be able to work with them."

IHM Leadership to Serve on JCAHO Healthcare IT Panel

JCAHO has announced that A.G. Breitenstein, Executive VP & Chief Privacy Officer at IHM has been asked to serve on the JCAHO Healthcare Information Technology Advisory Panel. The panel includes representatives from AHRQ, the VA, and HIMSS, as well as physicians, nurses, chief information officers, educators, and hospital leaders.

IHM Congratulates Citizens Memorial on HIMSS Davies Award

Denni McColm, Chief Information Officer at Citizens and an early IHM collaborator, reports that HIMSS announced the award last week and says, "In our full application for the award, we discussed that we have recently joined IHM." "We are strongly committed to the IHM vision and believe that you have the means to make electronic records many times more powerful through data collection and analysis than individual hospitals could ever do alone."

About Us

The Institute for Health Metrics is a privately funded not-for-profit organization focused on developing an electronic data analytics system to support quality and operational improvement in hospitals and research in public health and healthcare services.

As a central component of its mission, IHM works with a network of leading hospitals and researchers to organize and analyze health information as part of a variety of programs to support quality of care research, measurement, and improvement. We are a trusted intermediary among hospitals who are our business associates in compliance with applicable HIPAA regulations.

"We are in a mess. And yet I see no logical reason whatsoever that we cannot get out of this mess. The route out begins with trust. Trusting in our knowledge, trusting our patients, trusting the public, trusting in transparency, and somehow learning to trust each other."

Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP
President and CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement