2015 HealthCare's Most Wired

Intermountain Healthcare made the 2015 HealthCare’s Most Wired list, based on a collaborative study conducted by Hospitals & Health Networks, the American Health Association (AHA), and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). Intermountain has been named among the nation’s most technologically savvy healthcare systems in 16 of the 17 years the survey has been conducted.

“Being one of HealthCare’s Most Wired is more than just complying with the rules of a survey,” says Intermountain’s Marc Probst, Vice President and Chief Information Officer. “It’s about fostering relationships between people and technology, processes and people, and supporting tools that make those relationships thrive. We do that at Intermountain every day. And, we do it really well.”

The Most Wired survey of hospitals and health systems nationwide was based on four categories: infrastructure, business and administrative management, clinical quality and safety, and clinical integration.

Because of the increasing number of patient data breaches, this year’s survey emphasized privacy and security. Intermountain’s Information Systems implemented a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) this year and collaborated with its Privacy Team to develop and test an Incident Response Plan. These initiatives are demonstrative of efforts to maintain world-class security and privacy practices within the organization – and educate others about security.

This year's survey also looked at patient portal adoption and what tools organizations make available to patients for self-management of chronic conditions, like diabetes. Intermountain's Health Hub app and its myHealth portal are prime examples of efforts to engage patients in their health through technology. Only about 60 percent of organizations offer these types of tools.

“We commend and congratulate this year’s Most Wired hospitals and their CIOs for improving care delivery and outcomes in our nation’s hospitals through their creative and revolutionary uses of technology,” said CHIME CEO and President Russell P. Branzell, FCHIME CHCIO. “These Most Wired organizations represent excellence in IT leadership on the frontlines of healthcare transformation.”

With 2,213 hospitals represented across the United States. The AHA journal Hospitals & Health Networks publishes the results on its website hhnmag.com.

Interesting Facts from the Study

• 96 percent of Most Wired organizations use intrusion detection systems compared to 85 percent of the all respondents. Privacy audit systems (94 percent) and security incident event management (93 percent) are also widely used.
• 79 percent of Most Wired organizations conduct incident response exercises, or tabletop tests, annually, compared to 37 percent of all responding hospitals. These exercises and tests provide a high-level estimate of the current potential for success of a cybersecurity incident response plan.
• 83 percent of Most Wired organizations report that hospital board oversight of risk management and reduction includes cybersecurity risk.
• In 84 percent of Most Wired organizations, physicians can view and exchange other facilities’ results in the portal, compared with 63 percent of all hospitals surveyed.
• 76 percent use the portal and electronic health record (EHR) to exchange results with other EHRs and health information exchanges, compared to 56 percent of those surveyed.
• 81 percent can communicate with patients via email or alerts, in contrast to 63 percent of all respondents.
• 67 percent of Most Wired hospitals offer the ability to incorporate patient-generated data.
• 63 percent offer self-management tools for chronic conditions.
• 60 percent offer patient-specific education in multiple languages.