Atlantic Health Among Country's 'Most Wired' Health Care Organizations

Atlantic Health, the largest health system in Northern New Jersey and the parent organization of Morristown Memorial Hospital, has set a new bar for what patients should expect out of their health care providers. The 1,200-bed, two-hospital system with its flagship hospital in Morristown, has been officially recognized for its high-tech benchmarking practices with a designation among Hospitals & Health Networks magazine's Most Wired health care organizations.

Helmed by Linda Reed, RN, vice president of Information Systems and chief information officer, Reed's department is responsible for the cutting-edge clinical application infrastructure. From the collection and sharing of vital patient information with electronic health records (EHRs) to electronic medical charts to computerized bedside terminals to an online portal that allows patients to request appointments, prescription refills, referrals and lab results, Reed has systematically streamlined patient care across the Atlantic Health system.

While Reed said she planned the technology systems, the "Most Wired" honor wasn't earned in a vacuum. She credited the efforts of her clinical informatics team, managed by Michelle Downing, RN, and staffed with nurses, pharmacists and physicians whose input, she said, is essential to technology processes. "Without the utilization, without the clinical department participating and telling me what the bumps are, we wouldn't have gotten [Most Wired]," Reed said. "It's truly a team effort. Everyone has helped to build the system."

Reed, who has served hospitals in an IT role for nearly 19 years, worked through health care's humble technological beginnings when facilities claimed only one computer–and it was used for billing purposes. Now, hospitals have robots dispensing medication.

Atlantic Health's automated drug distribution system, called the Robot-Rx, picks, dispenses and restocks prescriptions using advanced bar-code scanning technology. The pharmacy robot is fed patients' prescription information via the Horizon Admin-Rx application, a handheld device used by nurses on a mobile computer workstation that scans bar codes to verify information on medication labels and patient wristbands.

Morristown Memorial was "an early adopter to technology," said Downing. The hospital started with electronic charting in the late 1990s while other technologies like bar-coding, the Robot Rx and the Horizon Enterprise Visibilty software board that tracks all admitted patients in real-time, were piloted more recently and rolled sequentially.

"We don't implement changes on a big bang where 'OK, tomorrow the whole house is going to go live with this,'" said Downing. "It tends to be a little conservative to make sure we understand what we're doing very well since we're dealing with patients, not widgets."

Transitioning hospitals into state-of-the-art facilities is no easy feat. While the myriad technical glitches always prove challenging, the single greatest obstacle is staff hesitation, Reed said. "Getting people to adopt technology is something that really scares them," she said. In fact, a large part of her job, in collaboration with Downing, is making staff comfortable and willing to work with technology. Although it's largely a generational issue, Reed said, "People are very reticent about technology until they use it and get experience with it."

Atlantic Health is no stranger to national praise and recognition. For the second straight year, the hospital system was chosen by Fortune magazine as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Lauded in particular for its open communication practices, Atlantic Health was the only hospital system in northern New Jersey to make this list.