UC-Davis & White River Family Win Davies Awards for EHR Use

University of California-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, Calif., and White River Family Practice in White River Junction, Vt., are winners of the 2013 Enterprise and Ambulatory HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence, respectively, for their use of health information technology, specifically electronic health records.


University of California-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, Calif., and White River Family Practice in White River Junction, Vt., are winners of the 2013 Enterprise and Ambulatory HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence, respectively, for their use of health information technology, specifically electronic health records.

The awards, given since 1994, are named in memory of Nicholas Davies, M.D., a practicing physician and president-elect of the American College of Physicians, and a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Improving the Patient Record, who died in an airplane crash in 1991.

UC-Davis has invested an estimated $160 million in its EHR from Epic Systems Corp. from 2002 through 2013, has seen “hard” savings of $63 million and a return on investment from efficiencies, meaningful use incentive payments and increased revenue from improved documentation and coding of $65 million. Ninety-five percent of clinical orders are entered via CPOE with 761 order sets online, 93 percent of inpatient and 91 percent of ambulatory clinical notes are created through EHR templates, and more than 335 physicians use speech recognition technology to document in the EHR, according to the organization. UC-Davis has received more than $16 million in EHR meaningful use incentive payments and shares an average of 61,400 patient records each month, as well as an average of 2,500 image exams monthly.

White River Family Practice, with six physicians, three nurse practitioners and a support staff of 14 serves 12,000 patients in Vermont and New Hampshire. It has used the EHR of eClinicalWorks Inc. since 2010 to support evidence-based treatment and has achieved significant improvement in caring for patients with chronic conditions. Clinicians have authorized remote access to patient records at any time. The organization has invested $388,437 in the EHR initiative and has realized $894,185 in additional revenue, a return on investment of 224 percent. Transcription costs have been reduced by $173,783 and billing costs are down by $145,945. The organization attested twice for EHR meaningful use in Stage 1, receiving $180,000 in incentive payments.

Both organizations will receive recognition during the 2014 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition in Orlando. HIMSS also will announce a public health agency winner of the Davies Award. More information on the winners is available here.

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