By Mary Beth Hislop
With numerous five-star awards from HealthGrades for medical services and magnet-hospital status from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, Mountain View’s El Camino Hospital is the nectar that attracts patients for treatment and nurses to work there. Now the hospital is attracting global attention for its innovative leadership in developing medical information technology.
With assistance from the United States Commercial Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, El Camino hosted a delegation of medical officials from the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China to demonstrate the hospital’s wired and wireless network that connects all information – from doctors’ orders to nurses’ documentation, pharmaceutical fills and patient billing.
The 16-member delegation included administrative officials, university professors and hospital physicians from different provinces and large cities in China, including Beijing.
Speaking through an interpreter, hospital Chief Executive Officer Ken Graham explained to the delegation how medical information technology is evolving and being integrated into the hospital currently under construction “for a new era of excellent patient care.”
Delegates broke into small groups to tour the radiology and medical records/health information departments and a nursing station for network systems’ demonstrations.
“We heard El Camino was a good hospital to visit … where they could learn about the new technology,” said Nina Kundra, senior program officer with the Business Council for International Understanding, a contracting agency under the U.S. Trade and Development Agency that funded the visit.
Despite a national effort since 1984 to implement computerized hospital information systems, a 2004 study by China’s Ministry of Health revealed only 6,063 of the 15,924 hospitals had established those systems. Eighty percent of hospitals in urbanized East China had systems in place, while merely 20 percent of hospitals in the rural northwest had information systems, according to a January 2007 report from the Institute for Health Information at the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an.
Li Baoluo, deputy director of the Chinese Hospital Information Management Association (CHIMA), was impressed by El Camino’s electronic systems. Li said many of China’s hospitals are equipped with state-of-the-art technology but acknowledged it is not widespread throughout the country.
“The hospital (El Camino) had very good information technology applications,” Li said. “We can use that information technology in our communities to develop all our hospitals.”
While Xi’an’s university report estimated 70 percent of China’s hospitals had information systems implemented by 2007, those systems are not standardized.
“The absence of universal and consistent standards for managing and exchanging clinical and administrative data has been identified as (a) bottleneck,” the report states. Because hospitals have developed their own systems with different standards and formatting, medical imaging and diagnostic information cannot be shared among medical facilities.
The government assigned CHIMA the task of standardizing the hospital systems, exploring international standards to develop national standards, according to the report.
Liang Minghui researches radiology and imaging and is chairman of China’s National Institute of Hospital Administration. Liang was surprised to learn X-ray films are no longer used – patients’ scans go directly to disk and archived films are being digitized.
El Camino recently embarked on a three-year project to assist its independent physicians to convert patients’ medical information to electronic health records.
“It’s a big project, but El Camino is trying to get the information into computers so it can be shared,” Graham said.
El Camino Communications Manager Judy Twitchell demonstrated the wireless voice device nurses and technicians wear around their necks to communicate with each other throughout the hospital.
Linda Sweeney, health information management services director, reviewed the department’s process in compiling paper records and transforming them to electronic files.
Delegates learned about the hospital supplies’ automated dispensing units, the computer program used for patients’ health information accessible by doctors and nurses, and COW, a computer on wheels that travels from room to room.
The visit from China’s delegation was one of several tours to medical facilities across the United States arranged by the U.S. Commercial Service, said Gabriela Zelaya, an international trade specialist with the organization.
The commercial service was founded in 1980 to promote worldwide export of U.S. goods and services.
“Our agency helps companies identify and evaluate international partners, navigate international documentation challenges, create market entry strategies and other export-related guidance,” Zelaya said. “We’re measured by export successes.”
Graham measures El Camino’s success by its recognition as a hospital to be emulated.
“We were delighted to host these distinguished visitors from China,” Graham said, “to be a model for them of how health information technology can have a direct and beneficial impact on patient care.”
Contact Mary Beth Hislop at marybethh@latc.com.
