Artesia General Hospital stays focused on building partnerships where it can, optimizing its EHR and enhancing patient and physician experience. So far this week we’ve offered glimpses about how innovation is pursued at a large academic medical center, and how it looks at a mid-sized for-profit hospital. Now it’s time to profile a small facility, where distance from big cities only makes the need to innovate and improve that much more critical.Artesia, New Mexico has a population of nearly 12,000, but it’s surrounded on all sides by empty expanses of scrubby desert.”Any big city is two to four hours away, whether it’s Lubbock, Albuquerque or El Paso,” said Eric Jimenez, chief information officer of 49-bed Artesia General Hospital.That hasn’t stopped the small hospital from prioritizing innovation in a big way, he said. It’s how Artesia, with an IT staff of just 17 people, was able to successfully attest to HIMSS Stage 6, just two years after replacing its entire EHR and PACS systems.And there’s no rest for the weary. “After we met Stage 6, our next goal was to see how can we improve and get the most out of our EHR,” said Jimenez.The small team is engaged throughout the hospital on that optimization mission, he said, “doing SWOT analyses of our different departments and looking for opportunities where we can streamline the process.”

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