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Children's National Health System Recognized with Transformational Leadership Award from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the American Hospital Association

Washington, DC – Children’s National Health System has been recognized with the American Hospital Association (AHA) Transformational Leadership Award by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the AHA.

The CHIME-AHA Transformational Leadership Award honors organizations that have excelled in developing and deploying transformational information technology (IT) that improves the delivery of care and streamlines administrative services. The award is given to the organization’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), for recognizing the need for a strong partnership between its technology team and executive leadership.

Brian Jacobs, MD, Vice President, CIO and Chief Medical Information Officer at Children’s National, with the support of Kurt Newman, MD, President and CEO, won the award for their roles in prioritizing IT and partnering with Cerner to build the first pediatric health IT institute in the nation in 2013, the Bear Institute, which has helped clinicians deliver higher quality and safer care for children.

“We are honored to receive this award for Dr. Jacobs’s dedication to building a premier IT system and for the great impact the Bear Institute has had on the way we approach and deliver patient care,” Dr. Newman said. “We want to be the place that does the right thing for children all the time, and our work with the Bear Institute helps us fulfill this mission.”

Since 2013, one of Dr. Newman’s key strategies for the hospital has included building a world-class IT infrastructure as a core pillar. Dr. Jacobs has proven a central figure for building this IT infrastructure and has helped Children’s National become a national leader in health IT by devising and executing transformational strategies.

“We formed the Bear Institute to help us provide even better services for our patients. Harnessing the information derived from health information technology has allowed us to improve the quality and safety of the care we deliver, to innovate, to facilitate important research, and to support our organization in most everything we do,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Dr. Jacobs has played an integral role in the transformational efforts that have led to successes in quality and safety, IT operational excellence, and patient and family engagement.

Quality and Safety — Researchers at the Bear Institute have found that posting real-time patient data on the highly visible digital “Quality Boards” in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) significantly helped clinicians comply with quality and safety measures. A published peer-reviewed study in the Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Patient Safety found that the use of Quality Boards was associated with an 11 percent reduction in urinary catheter duration, a decrease in urinary tract infection rate, and a 49 percent improvement in the time from admission to obtaining treatment consent.  In addition, medication reconciliation improved by 13 percent.

Operational Excellence — Another transformation at Children’s National has come with the introduction of technology that helps nurses document the exact stop time of infusions. After implementation in April 2015, revenue from infusion services increased 340 percent from $123,000 to $542,000 in June 2015.

Patient and Family Engagement — The Bear Institute Innovation Team created a patient engagement application, MyBearGuide, for both iOS (Apple) and Android phones. The application features wayfinding technology to provide step-by-step navigation for locating clinics and other offices and services on the main campus along with other features such as Emergency Department waiting times. 

Under the direction of the executive leadership team at Children’s National, the Bear Institute has created a more reliable and safer infrastructure for providers and innovation for improving pediatric outcomes.

“The Bear Institute is yielding tangible results, which will be instrumental as we continue developing a premier pediatric health system and as we execute our own institutional vision to lead the nation in advancing the health and well-being of all children,” Dr. Newman said.

The Transformational Leadership Award was accepted by Dr. Jacobs at the CHIME Fall 2015 CIO Forum last night in Orlando, Fla.

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Contact: Lauren Lytle at 202-476-4500.

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