Community Healthcare System, with locations in northwestern Indiana was honored at the 2016 HIMSS Annual Conference for achieving Stage 7 EMRAM in 2015. Hospital and practice leaders and decision makers turn to the HIMSS Analytics Benchmark Suite, including the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM), to chart their path forward to reducing costs and increasing the quality of care in their facilities by implementing electronic medical records.

About Community Healthcare System

Community Healthcare System (CHS) is comprised of three not-for-profit hospitals in Northwest Indiana: Community Hospital in Munster, St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago and St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart employing 6582 healthcare providers. CHS is an 875-bed system with 40,477 annual discharges, 212,579 patient days, 556,821 outpatient visits and 131,582 ED visits making CHS the one of the busiest systems in Northwest Indiana. The CHS vast network of care locations includes Hartsfield Village, a Continuing Care Retirement Community in Munster, outpatient, physician practices, behavioral health, occupational health, home care, a medically-based fitness center, cancer research foundation, cancer support center surgical and rehabilitation centers. Community Healthcare System hospitals are regional leaders in orthopedics, cardiac cancer care, women’s health services and bariatric medicine, and offers a broad range of healthcare services. Organizationally, CHS has been highly recognized for quality care and acknowledged for meeting the highest healthcare standards in the nation by The Joint Commission (TJC) and has been ranked among the top 1% in the nation for overall clinical excellence. CHS supports the area's largest cancer treatment and research programs, which is linked to the National Cancer Institute and major research cooperatives around the globe.

Why they chose the EMR Adoption Model

In July of 2009, Community Healthcare System begain their journey toward Stage 7 EMRAM. The had specific goals including providing immediate notification to their mobile nursing staff, providing concurrent and retrospective data to allow for utilization of statistics, and long range planning for future integration with ongoing development and technology to enhance care for both immediate and future needs, among others. As part of the Stage 7 validations of 2015, Community Healthcare System's facilities join a list of elite organizations from around the globe to achieve this highest honor.

Read Community Healthcare System's full Stage 7 Case Study on their real-life implementation of their EMR technology and us of EMRAM. Hear from Alan Kumar, Chief Medical Officer/Chief Medical Information Officer for Community Healthcare System, on what it means to their organization to be validated as Stage 7 EMRAM.

Community Healthcare System's HIMSS Analytics EMRAM Stage 7 case study is just one example of how a hospital was able to accomplish many goals by partnering with HIMSS Analytics to chart their course and achieve Stage 7 on the EMRAM.