NorthShore Earns 'Triple' HIMSS Stage 7 Awards

NorthShore is one of only five organizations worldwide to achieve Stage 7 status on all three HIMSS Maturity Models

7/28/2020 – The Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has awarded NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) with Stage 7 status for the Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity (AMAM).

“Applied across five pavilions of care representing multiple locations and specialties, NorthShore leverages enterprise programs like the Clinical Analytics Prediction Engine and Capacity Management Center that showcase a fundamental shift toward leveraging data driven insights for better care and operational performance. Their AMAM Stage 7 validation shows NorthShore is at the leading edge of analytics culture and maturity," said James Gaston, MBA, FHIMSS, HIMSS.

One of NorthShore's AMAM case studies highlighted the efforts of the COVID-19 Analytics Research Team (CART) to leverage data in the fight against the Coronavirus. Comprised of HIT, analytics and operational leaders, the team focused on integrating EMR patient lists into workflows to support operational response; building a COVID-19 dashboard to include metrics on testing, number of positives, etc.; and developing predictive models around hospitalizations, ICU and ventilator usage, and PPE burn rates.

"NorthShore's analytics journey began 15 years ago with a bold investment in a data warehouse infrastructure and continued through years of investment to build a centralized analytics capability. The HIMSS review process evaluated competencies across infrastructure, data assets, data governance and data science. Stage 7 focuses on demonstrating our ability to integrate advanced predictive models into clinical and business workflow," said Chad Konchak, AVP of Health Information Technology at NorthShore. "NorthShore demonstrated analytics capabilities across these key areas achieving the highest level of analytics sophistication through 15 hours of presentations and interviews by analytics experts from across the country."

In addition to the Stage 7 AMAM award, HIMSS also revalidated NorthShore’s Stage 7 status on the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) and Outpatient EMRAM (O-EMRAM). Both models are used to improve patient care while reducing costs in case studies on predicting medical spend; and also developing an inpatient antibiotic stewardship assistance program using real-time EMR data. NorthShore is one of only five organizations worldwide that has achieved Stage 7 status on these three maturity models.

“NorthShore's systems and analytics capabilities along with our culture of using data was put to the ultimate test with the COVID-19 pandemic. I continue to be extremely proud of our ability to stay at the leading edge of technology to assist in improving patient care and outcomes, particularly in times of crisis,” said Steven Smith, Chief Information Officer at NorthShore.