Skaggs named most wired, partners with GE

A multimillion-dollar partnership with General Electric Medical Systems is putting the hospital ahead in the digital race. By 2007, Skaggs will be GE’s first all-digital community hospital.

For the third consecutive year, Hospitals & Health Networks, the journal of the American Hospital Association, named Skaggs to its annual list of the top U.S. small and rural hospitals for its use of computer technology.

Skaggs spent the last three years automating its physician offices so that patients’ conditions, orders and test results are all tracked electronically. The GE partnership will allow the same technology to be applied to the hospital’s entire in-patient continuum, said Crystal Stallings, chief information officer at Skaggs.

“We’re automating every clinical area of the hospital,” she said. “More time with patients and improved quality and speed of care is possible.”

GE is implementing 13 clinical information systems at the hospital in areas of acute care, surgery, clinics, diagnostic cardiology, obstetrics, radiology and pharmacy.

The most important feature of the new systems, Stallings said, is the quick access to medical records they will provide. Records will be readily available for doctors who need to make recommendations from home or patients who need to be treated at an out-of-town clinic while on vacation.

“We’re making sure the information is right at your fingertips,” she said.