Community Corner

Two Palo Alto Hospital Systems Deemed "Most Wired" in Country

The VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford Hospital are ranked high on the American Hospital Association's list.

Two of Palo Alto’s health care systems are the most wired in the country.

That’s according to The Hospitals and Health Networks, a publication of the American Hospital Association, which ranked the Department of Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford Hospitals as among the top 150 wired hospitals in the country.

The VA Palo Alto Health Care System (VAPAHCS) has received the ranking for the past six of the 13 years that the magazine has been awarding hospitals and health systems for their excellence.

“We have in many ways led the country,” said spokeswoman Kerri Childress. “Whereas a lot of hospitals have only begun to use computerized records, we’ve been using them for the past 20 years.

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According to Childress, the hospital also has a “telehealth” program where they can work with veterans in rural areas. They will soon be lauching a similar program for mental health.

What makes a system “wired”? The criteria that the AHA uses is infrastructure, business and administration management, clinical quality and safety, and care continuum.

This year, 1,300 hospitals, or about 24 percent of those in the U.S., completed AHA’s ranking survey. VAPAHCS was ranked among the top, alongside hospital systems such as Stanford Hospitals and Cancer Treatment Centers of America.


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