Electronic Health Reporter

For the fourth consecutive year, ChristianaCare has earned the “Most Wired” designation from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), which recognizes health care organizations that demonstrate the best practices through their adoption, implementation and use of information technology.

ChristianaCare earned the award in Most Wired’s new ambulatory category – which recognizes outpatient practices that demonstrate excellence in health care IT – as well as its hospital category, for both Christiana Hospital and Wilmington Hospital.

“We are leaning confidently and deliberately into a future where all care will be digital – except that which cannot be – and all care will be home-based – except that which cannot be,” said Randall Gaboriault, MS, chief digital and information officer at ChristianaCare. “That digital imperative is our organizational imperative, and it reinforces why we are relentlessly focused on leveraging technologies to forge deep connections with our neighbors to help them achieve their personal health goals.”

ChristianaCare’s place on the forefront of IT trends is the product of both a long-term investment in culture and a reimagining of IT processes, creating an environment in which good ideas can rapidly progress from concept to impact.

ChristianaCare’s use of transformational technologies to improve patient care includes:

• Video monitoring to help protect hospital patients from falls.
• Telemedicine advancements, including video visits with clinicians.
• Direct access by patients to the physician notes in their electronic health record, and the ability to contribute to their record through an online patient portal.
• Online express check-in at ChristianaCare’s five urgent care centers.

Exemplifying ChristianaCare’s effective use of technology to serve its neighbors is the organization’s electronic health record system, which enables providers to have access to all of a patient’s medical information, regardless of whether they show up at one of ChristianaCare’s primary care or specialty practices, hospitals, labs or emergency departments. It’s a concept that ChristianaCare’s IT team refers to as “one patient, one chart, one experience.”

With leadership from Gaboriault and his team, ChristianaCare also has earned a “Best Places to Work in IT” from IDG’s Computerworld. ChristianaCare’s Information Technology team also played an integral role in ChristianaCare receiving the Magnet Prize from the American Nurses Credentialing Center for positive distraction therapy through virtual reality.

The IT team worked with nurses on the Nursing Quality Monitor application, which was recognized at the American Nurses Association’s National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators Conference as a best practice for efficiency.

“Our IT caregivers actively listen to our clinicians so we can understand their needs and identify how to leverage the information systems that they are already using,” said Lynne McCone, vice president of IT Application Services for ChristianaCare. “By seeking to understand how our clinicians deliver health services, we can look for ways to innovate the systems that they use to help them better tailor their care to each patient’s needs.”

In addition to the Most Wired designation, Gaboriault and the IT team have been recognized with the IT industry’s highest awards, including being a four-time awardee of IDG’s CIO 100 award, a three-time awardee of Computerworld’s Laureate Award and multiple recognitions by InformationWeek, including “Most Innovative Organizations,” and “20 Innovative IT Ideas To Steal.” In 2019, Gaboriault was named to IDG’s CIO Magazine’s Hall of Fame.

CHIME noted that health systems recognized as Most Wired have demonstrated an ability to use their newly developed resources to improve care in their communities in an ever-changing industry. Organizations were also evaluated for their performance in administrative and supply chain, analytics and data management, business and disaster recovery, clinical quality and safety, infrastructure, interoperability and population health, patient engagement and security.