By Rocío Mellas
Mitzvá, Refuá, Chinuch and Tsedaká were the Judaic precepts that motivated doctors in the Jewish community to found the Sociedad de Beneficencia Israelita Brasilera Albert Einstein in the 1950’s. Some years later, in 1971, the society built a hospital whose objective is to offer excellence and quality in the healthcare sphere, and to generate knowledge and social responsibility.
Today the care center is called the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, and leads the Latin American rankings for prestige, quality and safety in healthcare institutions. It is accredited by the Joint Commission International, the College of American Pathologists, the American College of Radiology, the American Association of Blood Banks, the Magnet American Nurse Credentialing Center (in process), and Planetree.
To understand how it established itself as the best institution in Latin America one needs to understand the concepts that motivated its foundation: Mitzvá, Refuá, Chinuch and Tsedaká –or Good Actions, Health, Education and Social Justice.
“Albert Einstein is an extremely innovative hospital in terms of quality and progress,” says Dr. Claudio Lottenberg, the institution’s president.
So, what is the role of eHealth in this environment?
Valeria Pinheiro de Souza is the CMIO (Chief Medical Information Officer) at the hospital and is leading the implementation of the electronic health record. At the HIMSS Conference Latin America, she will give a talk entitled “A guide to ensuring that health information systems take into account the needs of clinics and the distinctive aspects of every organization.”
“The presence of a specific department to build a relationship between IT and care departments is fundamental; these are professionals with healthcare training and an affinity with technology who can facilitate and streamline discussions,” says Pinheiro de Souza. She adds: “To make best use of the system and ensure that results are achieved, the more mature the institution in terms of its processes and patterns of good practice, the better the chances of success.”
The telemedicine and electronic health record projects are a couple examples of the efforts of its team of IT professionals. The hospital’s CMIO explains the stage they are at with the implementation of the EHR: “We are in the phase for discussion of work flows proposed by the system, which demands commitment and flexibility. The main goal is to complete all the stages with quality in a timely fashion so that the system can be developed in the best way.”
The Hospital Albert Einstein has a presence in several different regions of Sao Paulo, with ten care units, and functions as a public-private institution. As Valeria Pinheiro de Souza says, the ongoing investment in the implementation of IT tools and solutions is significant, so ROI must be guaranteed. “There is some controversy about the calculation of ROI, as tangible and intangible achievements are evaluated. In this case the intangibles normally outnumber the tangibles as they are often not measured before the implementation so cannot be considered as a golive metric. In some cases ROI is not achieved for that reason, but the qualitative achievements can still justify the project,” she says.
Finally, the CMIO of the hospital with the highest quality ranking in Latin America (95.85%) reflects on the challenges that face the Albert Einstein in keeping hold of its ranking: “The Einstein has the best international certifications for quality and other areas, I think that we are going to reduce the effort it takes to maintain them and keep an eye on our metrics, I also think that we can do a successful implementation and thus achieve certifications for IT that reflect HIMSS Level 7 quality.”
At the Hospital Albert Einstein there is technology, knowledge management, professionals, infrastructure, social responsibility and four foundational traditions: Mitzvá, Refuá, Chinuch and Tsedaká.
