Intermountain Healthcare’s Research Leads to 2011 Transformational Leadership Award

ANN ARBOR, MI, October 27, 2011 – Analyzing data from Intermountain Healthcare’s vast enterprise data warehouse helped researchers at the Salt Lake City-based organization find the optimal gestational age for babies born in its hospitals.


Aiming at that “39-week sweet spot” for gestation has had a huge impact throughout the organization, which delivers nearly 32,000 babies annually. By avoiding medically unnecessary inductions or other interventions that caused birth before 39 weeks, Intermountain was able to greatly improve patient outcomes, reduce delivery complications and save money system-wide.

This research, conducted by Intermountain teams who used tools developed by Information Systems under the direction of Marc Probst, Intermountain’s CIO, earned the organization the 2011 Transformational Leadership Award, sponsored by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the American Hospital Association (AHA). Probst and Intermountain received the award at the CHIME11 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas.

Intermountain’s medical research team used the data in the system’s enterprise data warehouse to gather data that showed that, of babies delivered at 37 weeks of gestational age, 8.85 percent were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. That percentage dropped to 4.51 percent of babies delivered at 38 weeks of age, and fell further to 3.34 percent of babies with a gestational age of 39 weeks.

The data mining also found that babies were more likely to struggle with respiratory distress syndrome if physicians electively induced labor before 39 weeks. The data showed that if delivery occurs at 37 weeks, 1.92 percent of babies were affected. At 38 weeks the percentage drops to 0.68 percent and reaches a low of 0.42 percent at 39 weeks, before slightly climbing again at 40 weeks. The need for newborns to be on a ventilator also was significantly reduced if delivery occurred at 39 weeks gestational age.

Armed with statistical information from their own hospitals and using standards from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, Intermountain instituted a new guideline to limit labor inductions before 39 weeks unless a consulting physician agreed that an earlier induction was medically necessary. Today, there is strong support for the best practice protocol throughout all of Intermountain’s labor and delivery units.
Today, only 2 percent of all inductions at Intermountain’s hospitals occur before 39 weeks, compared with 28 percent of all inductions in 1999. Intermountain also has seen a 60-minute drop in the average length of labor in electively induced patients, with fewer C-sections (about 21 percent compared to the national average of 33 percent) and other medical complications associated with deliveries. The guidelines benefit new babies and their moms, and saves about $1 million each year, Probst said.

“My colleagues at Intermountain Healthcare and I are honored to receive the CHIME-AHA Transformational Leadership Award. This award signifies an increasing partnership between information systems and clinical teams in collaborating on and implementing solutions that transform healthcare delivery. This recognizes the strategic foresight and rigor of our teams, which are focused on developing best care models that continually improve medical outcomes and quality.”

The Transformational Leadership Award was created to acknowledge outstanding transformational leadership using IT in healthcare. Presented jointly to both the CIO and CEO, the award recognizes an organization that has excelled in developing and deploying information technology that improves the delivery of care and streamlines administrative services.

For more information about the CHIME-AHA Transformational Leadership Award, visit http://www.cio-chime.org/scholarshipandrecognition/LeadershipAward.asp.

About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 1,400 CIO members and over 70 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit www.cio-chime.org.

About Intermountain Healthcare
Intermountain Healthcare is a nonprofit health system based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with 23 hospitals, over 780 physicians in the Intermountain Medical Group, a broad range of clinics and services, and health insurance plans from SelectHealth. Intermountain Healthcare is the largest healthcare provider in the Intermountain West, with over 32,000 employees serving the needs of Utah and southeastern Idaho residents. Visit www.intermountainhealthcare.org for more information.

ontact:
Stephanie Fraser
Communications Coordinator
734-665-0000
sfraser@cio-chime.org

Updated: 10/27/2011 11:56:50 AM