Meet America's Most Innovative Hospitals

Fierce Healthcare announces its 2007 Hospital Innovators Awardees. Friend and client Healthcare CEO blogger Nick Jacobs runs one of the top five.

Just announced by Anne Zieger and her team at prestigious industry analysts at FierceHealthcare.com:

"We are pleased to announce the release of our first-annual Hospital Innovators Awards —honoring U.S. acute care hospitals that have taken a leadership role on critical industry issues... These awards honor some of the most innovative acute care hospitals that are stepping outside of 'business as usual' and getting special things done. Some are strikingly original, and others are just doing a great job of solving common industry problems."

1.	Memorial Hospital-South Bend	6.	Sisters of Mercy
2.	Licking Memorial Hospital	7.	St. Joseph's Hospital
3.	University of Pittsburgh Medical Center	8.	Griffin Hospital
4.	Winona Health	9.	Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
5.	Windber Medical Center	10.	Morton Plant Mease Health Care

Number five on Fierce's top ten list, Windber Medical Center, is managed by none other than President and CEO F. Nicholas (Nick) Jacobs, freshly returned from the healthcare blogging symposium at Consumer Health World in Las Vegas, produced by Transmarx.

Here are some excerpts from FierceHealthcare's 2007 award page recognizing Windber Medical Center as one of the top five most innovative hospitals in America.

"What they're doing: Despite its rural location and small scale, there are some things going on at Windber Medical Center that sit on the cutting edge. Windber's system...is tying together the work being done by its Windber Research Institute with day-to-day clinical practice. This concept is mostly at the idea stage in most institutions, including high-profile, big-bucks academic medical centers, but Windber is making it happen."

"Under this concept, known as The Model, patient care teams now include not only physicians and nurses, but also a researcher from the Institute whose job it is to apply what they're learning in the lab. Researchers draw in part on knowledge gained from the Institute's 40,000-donor tissue bank, which includes attributes such as gender, age, ethnicity and medical history, to predict what patients may need given the experience of similar donors. It's a noteworthy strategy--especially for a small facility out in the boonies."

"What's more, Windber has jumped into the Planetree model with both feet... As CEO Nick Jacobs puts it, the Planetree philosophy offers patients 'the best of a spa, best of a hotel and best of a hospital,' complete with integrative health features such as massage, aroma therapy and Reiki, and comfort options like private kitchens, popcorn and bread making machines for patient's families, double beds in OB, a greenhouse, healing gardens and decorative fountains. On the less touchy-feely side, this model also gives patients complete access to charts during their stay, giving them chance to ask questions as they see fit. While Planetree has its detractors, it's hard [not] to argue that Windber is making a great go of it."

This is actually the second time Windber has received accolades for innovation within the last month. FierceHealthcare's award comes on the heels of the April 17, 2007 issue of Inside Healthcare Computing, covered in my April 24th post over on Trusted.MD in which Nick, others and myself evangelized for the business value of blogging and other web-based social media for healthcare organizations.

You can read excerpts from Inside Healthcare Computing, or download the complete article (as an Adobe Acrobat/Reader document) here.

So, congratulations to Nick and everyone whose creativity, hard work and innovation earned them Fierce Healthcare's recognition for clinical excellence.

Companies, Hospital CEOs Connect With Audiences by Blogging

New article highlights healthcare blogging and its tangible benefits to both the patient community and to organizations.

Inside Healthcare Computing's 4-16-07 issue features an outstanding article on the real-world benefits of Internet social media to both the patient community and to healthcare organizations.

Quoted in journalist Kayt Sukel's 600-word piece are Microsoft's Global Healthcare Industry Director, Bill Crounse MD; Nick Jacobs FACHE, CEO of Windber Medical Center; Promedica's Carol Kirshner and myself.

(We've purchased web reprint rights to the article, which you can download in its entirety here.)

Some excerpts:

Healthcare is missing an opportunity, says Bill Crounse MD, global
healthcare industry director for the Redmond, Wash. based Microsoft
Corporation.

...Crounse says the blogs give him a platform for connecting with decision makers. "How do you connect with an audience? ... Blogs are a great way to reach the narrow constituency of healthcare professionals interested in technology and how it can improve healthcare delivery and patient safety. It's a way to have a conversation."

(Bill clearly understands that Markets are Conversations, as as advocated by those of us that evangelized professionally for online communities, back when relatively few ears in the healthcare and pharma industries were listening.)

...Carol Kirshner, vice president of nursing continuing education
company The Promedica Research Center of Loganville, Ga. agrees.
“It's about listening to your customers, finding out what they want, and
responding. Even if you can't incorporate what they want, you can at
least show them that you're listening"...

...Kirshner cites Windberblog, the blog of F. Nicholas Jacobs, President and CEO of the Windber Medical Center and Research Institute in
Windber, Pa., as one of the best healthcare blogs.

“Jacobs really believes in transparency of healthcare and puts it out there with his blog," says Kirshner. “It's one of the best examples of how blogs can build a trusting relationship with customers and the community.”

(You go, Carol.)

Michael Russell, technology journalist and Windber's [blog strategist], says that linking the hospital's site to Jacobs' blog was a risk worth taking, even though it's uncommon to mix business and personal sites. "We felt strongly that the blog, and especially the multimedia content on it, was the ideal way for him to get his innovative ideas out to patients, professional peers, and the press."

"This has been the best year financially for the hospital in 101 years and I attribute some of that to my blog," says Jacobs. "I think more people know about us and know who we are by reading it and it's really helping us."

For those who'd like to learn more, Nick Jacobs will be speaking at the upcoming Spring 2007 Healthcare Blogging Summit, presented by Trusted.MD and our friends at Transmarx. Save the date.

Download a reprint of the Healthcare Computing article.