By Healthcare Facilities Today

Geisinger Health System, based in Danville, Pa. and Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare have moved beyond just implementing information technology to the management of information through technology, according to an article on Becker's Hospital Review website. 

Geisinger is known for being on the cutting edge of innovation in healthcare, the article said, piloting bundled payments, paying physicians for performance, developing intellectual property and more. It has continued this spirit of innovation with HIM, exploring new ways of using HIT to improve care.

Some examples of Geisinger's HIM initiatives:


• Creating a data warehouse that integrates data from the electronic health record and other sources, such as administrative systems, to guide clinical decisions, identify gaps in care and manage population health. 


• Using iOpenNotes,  a web-based platform that allows physicians to share their visit notes with patients electronically. Currently, more than 100,000 patients view the notes of more than 500 participating Geisinger physicians.

Intermountain Healthcare is also leading innovation  through its Institute for Health Care Delivery Research, Invention Management Office and newly launched Healthcare Transformation Lab, according to the article

Intermountain's initiatives include:

• Centralizing its transcription and coding departments to make the best use of staff, improve efficiency and lower costs. Centralizing operations also facilitates standardization of processes across Intermountain's 22 hospitals and other sites of care. 

•  Streamlining the process for responding to medical records requests by federal government groups such as recovery audit contractors, zone program integrity contractors, and Medicare administrative contractors. 

•  Using dashboards to measure transcription and coding turnaround, document completion rates and productivity against goals. 

Read the article.