How Each Digital Health Most Wired Participant Contributes to Efforts to Improve Care

By Bill Spooner

Four years ago, the Digital Health Most Wired Governing Board vowed that the survey we are responsible for overseeing each year would move the industry forward. Our goal with the survey is to identify and share best practices from top-performing healthcare organizations so we can raise standards across the industry. With the help of expert advisory groups, each year we review and incrementally update the survey to remove questions that measure what has become common practice, add questions that reflect impactful advancements and include non-scored questions to explore future survey topics.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), which conducts the survey and recognition program, had the vision to make Digital Health Most Wired the industry gold standard. In four years, we have seen exponential growth in participation, with organizations showing a desire to meet and exceed the definition of excellence in health and care. Despite the demands that the pandemic placed on healthcare organizations, more than 30,000 facilities were represented in 2020, which is almost double the number in 2019. The number of organizations that earned Level 10, the top certification level, grew from three to eight.

That’s great progress, but it is only the start. Patients deserve consistent, accessible, high-quality care wherever they live, and technology can enable that care. Given the incredible amount of innovation occurring in healthcare today, we have the potential to bend the curve sharply higher with Digital Health Most Wired. Healthcare organizations that participate in the survey help set a benchmark to measure the industry’s progress and identify areas in need of improvement. The more organizations that complete surveys, the clearer the picture. Every participant contributes to the mission.

On April 14, CHIME’s Digital Health Most Wired team opened the survey to eligible healthcare organizations. CHIME offers several surveys – hospital, ambulatory, long-term care, combined (which is the three combined) and international – that will remain open through mid-June. Each organization that completes the survey will receive a customized benchmarking report and certification from level 1-10 in August. Participants that earn Level 7-10 certification will be recognized in a special edition publication, with top-tier recipients honored during the CHIME21 Fall Forum, scheduled for Oct. 27-30 in San Diego, Calif. In the fall, CHIME will publish and distribute an industry trends report based on survey data as well.      

We encourage every eligible organization to take the 2021 survey and help drive innovation in healthcare. You can learn more about the Digital Health Most Wired program here. If you have any questions, email the Most Wired team at [email protected].

Bill Spooner is chair of the Digital Health Most Wired Governing Board and retired Sharp HealthCare CIO.