In naming Ontario-based North York General Hospital a HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence recipient, HIMSS noted the award recognizes outstanding achievement in leveraging health IT to improve patient outcomes.
“The challenge of implementing change of this scope and scale was immense, but possible, thanks to great teamwork and a constant focus on the quality and safety benefits we are celebrating today,” NYGH President and CEO, Tim Rutledge, MD, said in a statement. “Receiving the Davies Award is a reflection of the commitment to excellence of our people, the staff and physicians who made it happen.”
Founded in 1968, the community academic hospital located in the Toronto suburb of North York has acute, ambulatory and long-term care services at three sites, including 419 acute care inpatient beds and more than 5,000 staff, physicians and volunteers.
NYGH has prevented more than 11,000 medication errors with closed-loop medication administration, which eliminated manual entry of medications and alerted providers if a medication didn’t match the drug, dose, timing or route for the intended patient.
Further, the health system leveraged computerized provider order entry and clinical decision support to cut venous thromboembolism occurrences in half. NYGH also bolstered safety and quality measures for computerized provider order entry, clinical support and medication reconciliation to significantly lower in-hospital death from medication errors, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“Despite the challenges many healthcare organizations face with funding, competing priorities and a lack of medication barcoding standards in Canada, NYGH aligned people, process improvement, and health information technology to generate sustainable improvements in patient outcomes,” Jonathan French, HIMSS senior director of Quality and Patient Safety and Davies Program Director said in a statement.
NYGH will be recognized at the 2017 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition, February 19-23 in Orlando.