April 2007
Raising Efficiency. Raising Capacity. Raising the Bar.
The State of the CEO
When an industry shifts, so do the skill sets of the people leading the pieces. Hospital CEOs have seen their roles shift away from operations to more external and strategic roles in recent years, says Thomas C. Dolan, Ph.D., president and CEO of the American College of Healthcare Executives. “CEOs were primarily business managers,” Dolan says. “Not that they didn’t care about patient care or were not involved in it, but their primary responsibility was the business side of the hospital. Today, they go from being managers to leaders in many respects.”
Jim Molpus, HealthLeaders News
Steve Case Launches His Health Revolution
Steve Case launched Revolution Health’s Web site, a founder with a history and deep pockets and recognizable partners - Colin Powell and Carly Fiorina. “While Revolution Health will be a journey over many years to come, we are excited today to launch a site that is the cornerstone of our efforts to revolutionize healthcare,” Case said in a statement today. “There is a lot of great health information and tools on the Internet, but nobody has assembled them in a way that is compelling and useful for consumers who want to take more control of their family’s health.”
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News
ACP Supports New Bill to Promote Adoption of Health Information Technology
"The American College of Physicians (ACP) is greatly encouraged by the introduction of the 'National Health Information Incentive Act of 2007'," ACP President Lynne M. Kirk, MD, FACP said. "Increased use of health information technology (HIT) could greatly benefit health care in the U.S. through improved patient care, reduction in medical errors, higher efficiency, and potential long run cost savings." The bill, introduced by Representatives Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) and Phil Gingrey (R-GA), is designed to facilitate the development and adoption of national standards, and to provide initial financial support and ongoing reimbursement incentives for physicians in smaller practices to adopt HIT to support quality improvement activities. The legislation is based in large part on ideas originally developed by ACP.
Medical News Today
Survey: IT a Means to Safer Patient Care
Reducing medical errors is the top reason for implementing information technology at healthcare delivery systems across the country, according to the 18th annual HIMSS Leadership survey. The top barrier to deployment of IT, the survey finds, continues to be the cost. Respondents also identified patient care and satisfaction as the top business issues in healthcare today and over the next few years.
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News
ROI for health IT Takes Time and Comes with Caveats
It takes a long time for health care organizations to see a return from IT investments, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, which may explain why the industry has long been seen as a laggard in technology spending. Based on an analysis of performance data from nearly 2,000 U.S. hospitals, the report concluded that IT investment must reach a tipping point before it can lead to cost reduction. Until reaching that point, hospitals experience operating costs with little near-term financial benefit, the report noted.
ComputerWorld
Patient Safety Still Top Reason for IT Adoption, HIMSS Survey Finds
Promoting patient safety continues to be the top reason for implementing information technology, while a lack of financial and staffing resources continues to be the most significant barrier to implementation, according to the 18th annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society leadership survey. Among the 360 healthcare IT leaders surveyed, 18% reported experiencing a security breach within the past six months, and internal breaches of security were named as the top data security concern by 57% of the respondents. In response to security concerns, 70% were most likely to implement disaster-recovery technologies; 69% would use firewalls; 68% would use user access controls; and 64% mentioned both the use of audit logs and single sign-ons as likely security measures.
Modern Healthcare
Making the Marriage Work
One of the most prominent hospital-vendor development efforts belongs to Intermountain Health Care, a Salt Lake City-based hospital system, and GE Healthcare, a multi-national conglomerate known for its imaging technology. Beginning in 2006, the two began a seven-year development project, splitting roughly $200 million in cost, to build an integrated inpatient, outpatient and emergency department clinical information systems package. The new system will replace Intermountain’s homegrown legacy system, says Kevin Smith, associate vice president of information systems and general manager for the GE alliance. “We needed a partner to help us build it,” he says. “Someone with deep pockets and clinical-systems expertise.”
Health Leaders
Wal-Mart to Apply its IT Expertise to Healthcare
Retail giant Wal-Mart not only plans to invest in healthcare IT, but also intends to apply some of what it has learned in the retail marketplace to help lower healthcare costs for its employees - and the nation, a top Wal-Mart executive said recently.
Diana Manos, Healthcare IT News
CMTC Presents Lean Healthcare Workshops in May
CMTC, southern California's leading Lean practice organization, has teamed with the premier provider of Lean to the healthcare industry, Lean Healthcare West, to offer Lean Healthcare California(TM). Lean Healthcare California(TM) will allow hospitals, clinics and physician offices to look at their work differently -- identifying potential savings of time, resources and eliminating errors. CMTC has partnered with Lean Healthcare West to exclusively provide Lean programs designed for medical environments.
Sys-con Media
National Health IT Week 2007
(May 14 – 18, 2007) NHIT is a broad-based, collaborative effort to accelerate national health information technology adoption. Organizations with diverse perspectives on healthcare gather in Washington, DC, to work together under one banner with the goal of improving healthcare efficiency, quality, cost-effectiveness and patient safety through health IT. National Health IT Week 2007 will coincide with several partner events, including HIMSS Advocacy Day ’07 – an event that promises to exceed 2006 attendance levels of 250 high-level federal, state, provider, vendor, pharma and payer leaders from 48 states and 25 associations who assembled to bring the health IT message to Capitol Hill.
Register at: http://www.himss.org/advocacy/activities_advocacyday.asp
Vision Center Allows Visitors to Experience Patient Flow Logistics and Tracking up Close
When you first enter StatCom’s vision center, you can’t help but be struck by its coolness factor. You’re entering the hospital of the future, but a future which is within your grasp now. Equipped with everything from family waiting area displays, nursing unit area, bed management hub, ED facility, and an OR suite, this innovative facility was created to showcase the StatCom solution, the first enterprise solution of its kind which can manage patient flow logistics and tracking from admissions to discharge. In this state of the art facility potential customers can get a realistic feel for how the solution works. The facility is also used for customer users and StatCom staff training and testing, as well as a research laboratory.