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Two state hospitals receive Most Wired Award for meeting industry’s technology standards

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — The American Hospital Association’s Health Forum and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives has distinguished two hospitals in West Virginia as meeting the industry standard when it come to information technology.

MostWired_2015-JPEGThe 2015 Most Wired survey released on Thursday listed Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown and United Hospital Center in Bridgeport as leaders in leveraging IT to improve performance for value-based healthcare in the areas of infrastructure, business and administrative management, quality and safety and clinical integration.

Owais Rafique, Director of IT for UHC said his department is thrilled with the designation and credits it to a complete staff effort.

“This designation is really the result of their work that they’ve put in and also for our leadership who basically understood the need for this technology so that we could implement it.”

This is not the first recognition the department has received from the same organizations. Back in 2013, UHC received the Most Improved Award.

Since then, the hospital continued to improve on several projects, some of which focused on integrating patient care with technological convenience.

“We’re the only hospital in the state that has their nurse call system

Director of IT Owais Rafique looks over some of the hardware inside UHC Data Center
Director of IT Owais Rafique looks over some of the hardware inside UHC Data Center

integrated with our mobile phones for nurses,” Rafique said. “If a patient in their room presses a button, if they need something, if they’re in pain or whatever they need, that request shows up on a nurse’s phone.”

Another project Rafique believes helped work them toward a Most Wired Award is the patient portals.

“Our patients can access their records, more specifically their lab results and diagnostic reports, online –which is secure. They don’t have to come to the hospital to get that.”

Those records can be accessed at uhchart.com.

Now that the hospital has obtained this award, Rafique said they will continue to work hard in order to keep it.

Many projects are in the works to protect an individual’s data from a variety of threats.

Meanwhile, a new Electronic Records Management system will make that same data available to physicians in one location.

“This will be integrated. This will be one single record for a patient for them,” Rafique said. “I think that will help a lot from a provider perspective as well as a patient care perspective, from getting efficiencies and also having better outcomes.”

The importance of integrating new and innovative technologies for hospitals has increased rapidly over the past few years.

Part of the motivation for Rafique and the staff at UHC is making sure those who enter UHC have access to important information regarding their care as soon as possible.

“From a patient perspective, folks are expecting that information to available on their cell phones and they’re utilizing technology in their day-to-day lives more than they did 10 to 15 years ago.”

More information about the Most Wired survey can be found here.





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