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