ALICANTE, Spain -- Hospital Marina Salud de Denia is the first non-U.S. recipient of the prestigious HIMSS Davies Enterprise Award. Recognized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Marina Salud is the first Davies winner in Spain, one of the first in Europe to achieve HIMSS Stage 7 and also one of the world's few hospitals to be deemed fully paperless.

Davies Enterprise Award recipients are HIMSS Stage 7 and 6 organizations that demonstrate significant, sustainable improvement of patient outcomes through the utilization of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and IT while achieving return on financial investment.

Marina Salud manages the administrative functions and health care services of the Marina Alta Health Department in the autonomous community of Valencia, a population of nearly 200,000, for a fixed annual cost per person. It includes a network of primary care centres and a 206-bed hospital. Since the implementation of the Cerner Millennium(R) Electronic Health Record (EHR) in 2009, Marina Salud has realized several long-term improvements which stood out to the HIMSS selection committee.

To quantify the benefits of the EHR, Marina Salud conducted a detailed study of their return on investment (ROI). This economic analysis promoted the objectivity of investment decision-making and determined the timeframe required for an investment to deliver value.

Recognized as a pioneer in its effort to measure the results of implementing a clinical information system, Marina Salud believed the study was crucial to understanding the impact of workflow changes driven by digital healthcare practice.

Marina Salud discharged about 11,500 patients in 2010 and 2011, with an adjusted average length of stay of 5.9 days and occupancy of 89 percent. This represents a one-day improvement in length of stay as compared to Marina Salud's first months of operation (during which Cerner Millennium was used, but staff had not fully mastered the new processes), and a six percent improvement in occupancy.

Standardized care resulted in several positive changes at Marina Salud. For example, hospitalization rates for patients with congestive heart failure dropped by one-third; decreased readmission rates by 35 percent. Additionally, hospitalization and readmission rates for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease decreased by 21 percent and 15 percent respectively.

Marina Salud also made significant advancements in the detection, treatment and prevention of diseases. Digital workflows enabled clinicians to increase cervical cancer screenings by 84 percent and breast cancer screenings by 15 percent. The time from identification of cancer risk to initiation of treatment dropped by 42 percent.

Marina Salud had a sepsis mortality rate of 45 percent, but since implementing Cerner's advanced sepsis algorithm, that number has fallen to 32 percent and continues to trend downward.

The leadership at Marina Salud is confident that extending clinical decision support across multiple conditions will empower clinicians to adhere to best practices and achieve similar outcomes in patient care.

"Marina Salud has always sought excellence of care and winning the HIMSS Davies Enterprise award confirmed that we are working in the right direction," said Vicent Moncho, Chief Information Officer at Marina Salud. "In a hospital with a process-oriented management, the Cerner Millennium solutions help us define and improve them.

Centralizing health records, going paperless, reducing the length of stay, improving the occupancy management and saving money ultimately benefits our staff and patients."

About Cerner

Cerner's health information technologies connect people, information, and systems, at approximately 14,000 facilities worldwide. Recognised for innovation, Cerner solutions assist NHS Trusts and clinicians in making and documenting care decisions and enable organizations to manage the health of populations. The company provides clients with a wide range of in-house services, as well as an integrated clinical system to help organizations manage quality, outcomes and revenue.

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