LARNED  – Pawnee Valley Community Hospital, Larned, has achieved national ranking among a select group of hospitals receiving Stage 6 Certification by The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics.
The certification recognizes PVCH’s progress toward achieving a fully paperless patient record system.
“HIMSS Analytics is a nationally recognized database for the healthcare industry,” said Matt Heyn, Pawnee Valley administrator. “They polled all 5,281 hospitals in the nation and Pawnee Valley Community Hospital was one of only seven Critical Access Hospitals to achieve Stage 6 Certification — an accomplishment we’re extremely proud of.”
A Critical Access Hospital (CAH) is a licensed acute care rural hospital with 25 beds or less that is certified to receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare. PVCH is one of 1,320 such Critical Access Hospitals in the nation.
Stage 6 is a measure of a hospital’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Adoption that includes all facets of a fully paperless patient chart. The EMR Adoption Model identifies and scores hospitals using an 8-step scale that charts the path to a fully paperless environment.
“Progressing to a fully electronic patient records system is part of our journey in fulfilling our mission to be the best Critical Access Hospital,” Heyn said.  “For us to arrive at Stage 6 Certification within a year of our formation as a new hospital demonstrates the commitment and hard work of everyone involved.”
Stage 7 is the highest level attainable, Heyn explained. To date, none of the Critical Access Hospitals in the United States have achieved that level.
“Our goal is to achieve Stage 7 Certification within the next year and have a fully integrated and electronic health records system,” he said.
Heyn expressed gratitude to HaysMed’s IT department which built the paperless EMR environment for Pawnee Valley Community Hospital to mimic the State 6 environment already in place at HaysMed.
“Completion of these requirements is important for certification, but even more important is the impact these technological advances have on our patients’ safety and welfare,” Heyn said. “Components such as the clinical decision support system can review a patient’s symptoms and recommend the appropriate treatment and protocol to follow, or automatically check for any drug interaction.”
Pawnee Valley Community Hospital is a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital serving Larned and the Pawnee County area. The hospital was formed in early 2010 in a partnership between Pawnee County and HaysMed, a regional tertiary care center, when the Larned community faced the closing of its previous hospital.
To achieve Stage 6 Certification, Pawnee Valley Community Hospital had to demonstrate completion of the following requirements for all previous stages:
• Stage 1: Major ancillary electronic records systems such as laboratory, pharmacy and radiology are in place.
• Stage 2: These systems provide data for physician retrieval and review of results and to share information with other patient care stakeholders.
• Stage 3: Nursing/clinical documentation (vital signs, flow sheets); notes, care plan charting, medication administration records; error checking and medical image access are available on the system.
• Stage 4: Computerized Practitioner Order Entry is in place for use by any physician or clinician.
• Stage 5: Medication administration is fully implemented with bar coding or other auto identification technology, such as radio frequency identification, to check for drug interactions and maximize patient safety.
• Stage 6: Full physician documentation/charting is implemented for at least one patient care service area, and medical images can be provided to physicians via an intranet, displacing all film-based images.