Tampa General Hospital Honored For Technological Practices

TAMPA, FL – Tampa General Hospital announced hat it again has received Stage 7 designation from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society for its continuous efforts to improve patient outcomes by implementing technology practices related to electronic medical records.

Additionally, for the first time, Tampa General was awarded Stage 7 designation in the outpatient category for its comprehensive success in outpatient and ambulatory EMR adoption, capabilities and usage.

Less than 7 percent of hospitals and health systems in the United States have achieved Stage 7 recognition from HIMSS, which is the world’s leading nonprofit advocacy and accrediting organization in the healthcare IT industry.

“We are honored to receive these highly coveted Stage 7 recognitions from HIMSS, again putting Tampa General in an elite group of health systems providing this level of seamless patient care, moving us closer to our goal of becoming one of the most innovative and safest academic health systems in the country,” said John Couris, president and CEO of Tampa General. “I want to recognize our stellar IT team, led by our Chief Information Officer Scott Arnold, for their innovative work and focus on integrating technology to improve patient outcomes. We are raising the bar for medical care in Florida and across the country.”

Tampa General, a 1,007-bed nonprofit academic medical center and one of the largest hospitals in the country, has been recognized three times for its achievements and success in technology practices with a Stage 7 HIMSS designation. This is the hospital’s first Stage 7 designation for the outpatient category, which, in addition to Tampa General, includes supporting and integrating with Tampa General Medical Group, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine clinics, rehabilitation, transplant, infusion clinics and other outpatient functions performed by Tampa General.

“This recognition highlights the strong partnership between providers, clinical teams and technology at Tampa General. Optimized EMR and data management have the potential to improve community health outcomes, quality improvement and prevention activities,” said Arnold. “The Stage 7 designation means you have achieved the gold standard of health information technology,” he continued.

In addition to its nonprofit advocacy work, HIMSS recognizes and ranks the preeminent healthcare organizations across the globe on information technology capabilities and performance. National rankings are evaluated based on healthcare technology adoption within an organization on a scale from 0-7, with zero being completely paper-based and seven being a fully electronic implementation across all health records and associated tools within the organization.

"HIMSS congratulates Tampa General for achieving Stage 7 on both EMR adoption models (EMRAM and O-EMRAM). Stage 7 represents a culture of continuous improvement and care throughout the organization. It is reserved for those organizations truly committed to and showing concrete success in adopting EMR systems in their hospitals and health systems,” said Philip W. Bradley, FHIMSS, HIMSS analytics regional director, North America.