December 2007
Going with Patient Flow
Nurses Push for Input into Clinical Health IT Design to Boost Hospital Workflow
Pam Cipriano, chief clinical officer for the University of Virginia Health System and chair of the American Academy of Nursing's Workforce Commission, and Patricia Abbott, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, discuss the need for health IT designers and purchasers to seek input from nurses who work with the technology in a clinical setting. Cipriano said, "Nurses have a significant story to tell about what technologies will help expedite work, take the waste out of work to be more effective in care."
iHealthBeat
If It Ain't Broke, Fix It
Although hospital leaders haven't always been involved in the ins and outs of clinical processes, leaders like Gary Kaplan, Virginia Mason Medical Center's chief executive officer, have found that flawed processes are often the root of major medical errors. Rather than evaluating process after a serious event occurs, more leaders are immersing themselves in the details now.
Molly Rowe, Health Leaders Magazine
Information Technology Improves Hospital Health Care, New Study Says
Patients fare better in hospitals using information technology (IT) systems, according to a new Florida State University (FSU) study. The study, which appears in the November/December issue of the Journal of Healthcare Management, is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the relationship between IT use and health care in hospitals. "We found that the more information systems adopted at a given hospital, the better that hospital performed on a variety of important patient outcome measures," said Nir Menachemi, director of the Center on Patient Safety at the FSU College of Medicine.
Medical News Today
U.S. Needs Medical ID Numbers, Industry Organization Says
The National Alliance for Health IT is calling for a voluntary, patient-controlled national system of unique patient identification numbers in order to more accurately identify patients at the point of care. The system would be more secure, reliable and accurate than the current method of using information such as names, addresses and birth dates to match patients with their health records, NAHIT officials said.
Nancy Ferris, GovernmentHealthIT
New healthcare IT Bill Going Nowhere Fast
A bill to promote the use of technology in health care, re-introduced in October, is going nowhere fast. It sounds innocuous, and a bill on the same subject passed the House last year, but this one hasn't even gone to committee yet, and Congress is within weeks of ending its 2007 session. But the bill, now designated as HR 3800, was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce on its introduction and nothing more has come of it.
Dana Blankenhorn, ZDNet Healthcare
Hospitals Work to Make Health IT More Nurse Friendly
Some hospitals are taking steps to make health care IT more user friendly to nurses, allowing them to spend more time with patients. Genesis Health System in Davenport, Iowa, has created a nursing collaborative group to act as a liaison between the hospital's nurses and IT department. In addition, the hospital in 2005 began using wireless laptops to increase nurses' mobility.
Diana Manos, HealthcareITNews.com
SciHealth Inc. Helps Mary Washington Hospital Improve Emergency Department Performance Patient Wait Times
Mary Washington Hospital used SciHealth's INSIGHT as part of its ED Patient Flow initiative to dramatically improve performance. Results include a 45% decrease in patient wait times, a 50% reduction in radiology turnaround time for key emergency procedures, and significant gains in patient satisfaction. "Various performance improvement teams working on specific parts of the ED process used the INSIGHT tool very effectively. It is intuitive to them and they can quickly go in and see the latest results and how data is trending," according to James Swisher, Director of Performance Improvement.
Pharmaceutical Industry News
RHIOs Aren't Working, New Report Says
The development of regional health information organizations may not be effective in advancing healthcare information technology, a new report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation contends. "The strategy of building the network from the bottom up by establishing many RHIOs throughout the country is not working," ITIF's report said. The 23-page report, titled "Improving Health Care: Why a Dose of IT May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered" calls for a renewed national strategy for advancing healthcare IT.
Diana Manos, HealthcareITNews
Healthcare IT Is Not a Done Deal-Even in Theory
In a previous post, I briefly mentioned how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has started developing regional networks of electronic health information. Eventually, these networks will merge into a "network of networks," thus working toward a nationwide, compatible system of electronic health records by 2014. Unfortunately this "network of networks" approach of regional heath information organizations (RHIOs) has some serious faults. And the alternative system currently favored by many, health record data banks, still poses a lot of unanswered questions.
Maggie Mahar, Healthbeatblog.org
Benefits of Electronic Health Records Seen as Outweighing Privacy Risks
While physicians may be resistant to the time and financial costs of implementing electronic health records, the majority of the public is all for it, says a new Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive Poll. Seventy-five percent of respondents believe patients could receive better care if docs were able to share patient information electronically. Experts predict EHRs will become part of the healthcare debate during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Wallstreet Journal online
IBM HC 2015 - Win-Win or Lose-Lose
This IBM piece talks about what healthcare has to do to survive and create a win-win model. It looks at it from multiple perspectives - payor, provider, consumer, and supplier. They also do a good job of describing several unique models around the world and talking about several trends here in the US. Here are a few quotes, facts, and charts from the publication.
George Van Antwerp, Patient Centric Healthcare
Hospitals Say Mobile Clinical Computer Helps Improve Care Delivery
Five U.S. hospitals on Tuesday announced the results of in-house studies suggesting that a tablet-sized electronic clinical assistant device can help improve clinician productivity and satisfaction, Healthcare IT News reports. Launched in February by Intel Corporation and Motion Computing, the C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA) allows physicians, nurses and other hospital staff to access patient information at the bedside. In an evaluation of key performance measures, hospitals determined that the MCAs helped clinicians improve adherence to medication administration protocols and maintain up-to-date patient records.
Bernie Monegain, HealthcareITNews.com
StatCom is a HIMSS Analytics client and a HMSS platinum sponsor.