PHOTO CAPTION: Thanks to Remote Presence Technology, Grande Ronde Hospital ICU/CCU Nurse Manager Nena Jones (right) is able to consult with intensivists from Advanced ICU Care in St. Louis, MO. The Telemedicine Program at GRH not only brings specialty care to local patients, but provides face to face learning opportunities for Grande Ronde Hospital staff.
Grande Ronde Hospital has won the 2011 ECRI Institute Health Devices Achievement Award. It is awarded each year to honor excellence in the field of health technology management. In the award notification letter from ECRI Institute’s James Keller, Vice President of Health Technology Evaluation and Safety, he states Grande Ronde Hospital’s submission was chosen for “improving healthcare quality and reducing costs by leveraging technology.”
ECRI Institute’s prestigious list of previous winners includes Kaiser Permanente in California; Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, Children’s Hospital of Omaha in Nebraska and the Texas Children’s Hospital of Houston.
Grande Ronde Hospital ’s award application was submitted in June 2011. It describes how a 25-bed critical-access hospital in Northeast Oregon established a telemedicine network to provide rural patients greater access to specialty physicians. These efforts also required the Grande Ronde Hospital to convince the Oregon Medical Board to change its rules about physicians practicing across state lines. Some of the services provided by the Hospital’s program are being modeled by other hospitals, both rural and urban.
“We are so honored to win this award. It is further validation of the tremendous effort Doug Romer, our Executive Director of Patient Care Services, and his team have put forth in building a telemedicine program to further improve access to specialty care in the region that reduces cost and concern for patients who had no option but to travel out of the area for these services,” said Grande Ronde Hospital CEO and President Jim Mattes.
The 2011 award will be formally presented to Grande Ronde Hospital by Mr. Keller. The presentation is planned for October at Grande Ronde Hospital. A complete description of Grande Ronde Hospital’s telemedicine initiative will also be featured in an upcoming issue of ECRI Institute’s publication Health Devices.
View the whole press release from ECRI Institute.