Paper Records: The Cutting Edge

Paper cuts are a thing of the past at 54 U.S. hospitals -- and one in South Korea -- that have used robust electronic medical records to go completely paperless.

The Health Information and Management Systems Society recognized the hospitals last week for reaching what HIMSS calls Stage 7 of EMR adoption. At that level, clinical information can be shared easily via standard electronic transactions within the entire health information exchange network, including the hospitals and their clinics, other facilities, employers and patients.

Hospitals achieving Stage 7 adoption also use "data warehousing and mining techniques to capture and analyze care data for performance improvement and advancing clinical decision support protocols," HIMSS notes in explaining its EMR Adoption Model. Officials from HIMSS Analytics visit the hospitals to confirm EMR applications and usage.

The paperless hospitals include :

• Children's Hospital, Boston
• Children's Medical Center of Dallas
• Citizens Memorial Healthcare, Bolivar, Mo.
• Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, Calif. (35 locations)
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, Ill. (four locations)
• Sentara Healthcare, Norfolk, Va. (six locations)
• Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
• Stanford University Medical Center
• University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (two locations)