Citizens Memorial Healthcare Awarded the Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence

MEDITECH congratulates Citizens Memorial Healthcare (Bolivar, MO) for recently being named a recipient of the Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Citizens Memorial Healthcare (CMH) was the sole Organizational Davies Award Winner for 2005. The Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence honors health care organizations for their excellence in the use and implementation of health information technology. CMH becomes the first rural health system and the first nonacademic medical center to receive this award in its 11-year history.

An integrated and paperless health care information system connects the 74-bed hospital with five long-term care facilities, 16 physician clinics, and home care services across rural southwest Missouri. CMH credits their on-going clinical achievements -- facility-wide usage of the enterprise medical record (EMR) and the early physician adoption of their computerized order entry system -- as reasons for being recognized during a time when the importance of health care technology is highly noted in the nation.

"CMH is being recognized based on two specific criteria that set it apart from most other hospitals. One is the implementation of an electronic medical record that is patient-centered, covers all of the services provided by CMH, and is available to physicians from remote locations, allowing them to provide the safest quality of care. The second criteria is the use of computerized physician order entry," says Denni McColm, chief information officer.

"Citizens Memorial is to be commended for its success in using health care informatics to improve patient safety for the residents of Southwest Missouri," states Howard Messing, MEDITECH's president and chief operating officer.

Originally created by CPRI-HOST in 1995, the Davies Award Program honors Dr. Nicholas Davies, an Atlanta-based physician committed to the ideal of improving patient care through better health information management. As a member of the Institute of Medicine Patient Record Study Committee and chairperson-elect of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Davies' ideals live on in this award following his tragic death in a plane crash in April of 1991.

The full application is located on the HIMSS Web site.

SISU Medical Systems (Duluth, MN) was awarded the 2005 Outstanding Rural Health Team Award at the Minnesota Rural Health Conference last month in Duluth. This distinction is granted to only one health care organization each year, in recognition of their outstanding contribution to improving health care in Minnesota.