By Healthcare Facilities Today

Rush Memorial Hospital, in Rushville, Ind., was named 2013 Most Wired in this year's Hospital and Health Networks magazine's Health Care’s Most Wired Survey, according to an article on the Rushville Republican's website 

Health Care’s Most Wired Survey is conducted between Jan. 15 and March 15 annually and asks hospitals and health systems nationwide to answer questions regarding their IT initiatives. The magazine has been conducting the survey for 15 years. This year, respondents completed 659 surveys, representing 1,713 hospitals, or roughly 30 percent of all U.S. hospitals, according to the article.

“Rush Memorial Hospital purchased a fully integrated Health Information System (HIS) and other advanced technology, which allows Rush Memorial the ability enter and retrieve structured data that is vital to patient care, thus allowing us to grow with Healthcare Reform and adapt to new technology as it becomes available,” said Jim Boyer, RMH Chief Information Officer.

Among the survey's findings this year:

• Sixty-nine percent of Most Wired hospitals and 60 percent of all surveyed hospitals report that medication orders are entered electronically by physicians. This represents a significant increase from 2004 results when only 27 percent of Most Wired hospitals and 12 percent of all hospitals responded, “Yes.”

• Seventy-one percent of Most Wired hospitals have an electronic disease registry to identify and manage gaps in care across a population compared with 51 percent of total responders.

• Sixty-six percent of Most Wired hospitals share patient discharge data with affiliated hospitals, in comparison to 49 percent of the total responders. Thirty-seven percent of Most Wired hospitals do so with non-affiliated hospitals versus 24 percent of total responders.

Read the article.