(l-r) Judy Newell, H2U and the Volunteers at Aventura Hospital; Heather J. Rohan, CEO Aventura Hospital; Efraim Fixler, Gesher Tzedaka; and Rabbi Yisroel Brusowankin, Aventura Chabad.

In the Fall of 2008, Aventura Hospital and Medical Center, under the leadership of hospital CEO Heather Rohan, opened the Gesher Tzedaka Jewish Hospitality Room to provide support services for the comfort of their Jewish patients and families. Founded by Mrs. Miriam Alexander of the Yehuda Memorial Center Foundation and Efraim Fixler of Gesher Tzedaka, a local nonprofit that assists Jewish families in need, the room has become a welcome addition to the hospital’s many amenities for its patients and their families, providing everything from Kosher meals to religious books.

Registering newborn babies with county health departments has become faster and more efficient at Martin Memorial Medical Center thanks to the Internet.

Martin Memorial’s birth registry department recently began utilizing an electronic birth registration system provided by the state of Florida. The system allows the hospital’s birth registrar to electronically enter information, register a child’s birth with the state, and capture and store necessary signatures. The system does away with the hospital’s need to send original hard copy birth certificates to local county health departments.

The electronic birth registration system makes the process more efficient, reduces the use of paper and improves customer service by eliminating parents’ two-week wait to receive their children’s birth certificate. New parents may be able to pick up the birth certificate at the health department on their way home from the mother’s hospital stay.

The hospital’s birth registrar logs onto the Internet and accesses the database for the Florida State Department of Vital Statistics. The information is entered and a draft version of the birth certificate is printed and provided to the parents, who then review the information to ensure its accuracy. If there are changes, the registrar makes them at that time.

Once the information is approved, the parents use an electronic signature pad stating everything is correct and the registrar also signs off on the document. Then the registrar sends it to the database through a secure connection.

Each birth certificate has its own tracking number, and every week the hospital reviews birth records and compares it to the state database to ensure there are no errors.

The Central and North Florida HIMSS Chapter (CNFHIMSS) is pleased to announce that Florida International University students Katherine Fischer, Mark Israel and Shaista Mohammed led by faculty supervisors Monica Chiarini Tremblay, Ph.D., Gloria J. Deckard, Ph.D., and Nancy Borkowski, DBA, have been awarded a $15,000 grant to study stakeholder distrust as a barrier to Health Care Information Exchange (HIE) participation in the state of Florida.

It has been recognized that distrust among health care providers is perhaps the greatest deterrent to exchange of data and little research has focused on identifying the cause or remedy for this distrust.

"With this grant, we are confident that the students at FIU, through investigative research and analysis, will be able to identify feasible strategies that can be implemented to help engage health care providers," said CNFHIMSS HIE Co-Chair Duane Steward. "The ultimate goal is to breakdown the barriers that exist relative to the adoption and participation of HIE, and instead start building a platform of trust in the use of electronic medical record data."

The final written report and presentation of findings are planned for June 2010.