Planning, Early Support Keys to EMR Success,
Execs Say
At last week's HIMSS's Virtual Conference & Expo, IT
executives who have overseen successful EMR and other health IT
projects offered tips for health care firms looking to implement
such systems. "[The EMR] is a whole new application" for health
care firms, said Detlev "Herb" Smaltz, CIO at the Columbus-based
medical center. "They have been doing things with paper charts
forever."
Computerworld
Some 'Guardedly Optimistic' about New Health IT
Bill
Stabenow and Snowe were back Wednesday announcing the filing of
an updated version of their old legislation, now called the Health
Information Technology Act of 2007. The money is the same-$4
billion over five years. The bill would provide money to fund IT
acquisition grants to hospitals, long-term-care facilities,
critical-access hospitals, federally qualified health centers,
skilled-nursing facilities, community mental health centers,
physicians and physician groups. It also would allow these
organizations to accelerate depreciation of healthcare IT software
and hardware for tax purposes and provide targeted Medicare payment
boosts to providers that use IT to improve the quality of care to
patients with chronic conditions.
Joseph Conn, Healthcare IT
State of Emergency for the
ER
It's a crisis that touches every community. And it's far worse
than you think. A three-part series probes an institution at the
breaking point - and the best ideas for fixing it. To get a
closer look at Grady's inner workings, a NEWSWEEK reporter and
photographer spent five days in the ER. Such access is rare, and
NEWSWEEK agreed not to publish the names of patients-or photograph
them in identifiable fashion-unless they agreed to it and signed
releases. The portrait that emerged was disconcerting.
Three-part series on Newsweek.com
Healthcare IT an Epic
Challenge
As of 2006, fewer than 10 percent of American hospitals have
implemented health information technology, according to the
American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. Just 16 percent of
primary care physicians use electronic medical records. The vast
majority of health care transactions in the United States still
take place on paper, a system that dates to the 1950s. Moreover,
the health care industry spends just 2 percent of gross revenues on
information technology - a meager outlay compared to the 10 percent
average for other information intensive industries like
finance.
Mike Ivey,
The Capital Times
Self-service Technology Slowly Gains Foothold in
Healthcare
While healthcare lags behind other industries in rolling out
self-service technology, times may be changing. Very gradually,
providers and health plans are launching self-service options,
particularly kiosks, to streamline access to key information,
following the lead of industries like retail and travel which have
had them for many years. Right now, vendors are definitely ahead of
providers when it comes to such technology, but their enthusiasm
may help drive things along.
Cindy Atoji, Digital Healthcare &
Productivity.com
HP Joins Medical Data Effort -
Digital Records to be Linked across the
State
Hewlett-Packard Co. has agreed to help develop a statewide
health information exchange to give physicians, hospitals and
patients access to secure electronic medical information, giving
the ambitious project an important boost. HP will join other
vendors selected by the California Regional Health Information
Organization, a statewide collaborative project funded largely by
health care organizations. The goal is to create systems that will
allow as many as 78,000 physicians and 400 hospitals to share data,
the largest such effort in the country.
Victoria Colliver, San Francisco
Chronicle/SFGate.com
TechLinks Interview with Praveen
Chopra, Chief Information and Supply
Chain Officer Children's Healthcare of
Atlanta
I always want to be an early adopter, not a laggard. "Leading
edge" is a business concept whereby I say, "This is good
technology. How do I apply it? What does it mean? What does it
impact?" I gather end users and make them business partners so
they're willing to test. Sometimes I receive good ideas from end
users. Once we learn how it works, we do a big bang implementation.
So, I keep my ears and eyes open to find out what's interesting,
what isn't and where the leading edge is.
TechLinks
Nurses Bridge
Gap between IT, Care
More and more nurses have been bridging the gap between
information technology and clinical practice. And Mary Beth
Mitchell, a registered nurse, finds herself happily positioned at
these crossroads. "It is not enough to have programmers and
engineers designing and implementing these systems," said Mitchell,
director of clinical informatics at Presbyterian Hospital of
Dallas. Nurse-informaticists are needed as the advent of electronic
health records ushers in a preference to go paperless.
Susan Kreimer,
The Dallas Morning News
GAO Sees Need for Benchmarks on Pushing IT in
Quality Efforts
The GAO took aim Friday at HHS and the CMS, saying the agencies
have inadequate measures in place to gauge their own progress in
promoting the use of healthcare information technology in
collecting hospital quality-of-care data. While noting that HHS has
issued numerous contracts to promote healthcare IT and that it has
created the American Health Information Community to advise the
department on IT policy, "HHS has identified no detailed plans,
milestones, or time frames for either its broad effort to encourage
IT in healthcare nationwide or its specific objective to promote
the use of health IT for quality data collection," according to the
latest report from the federal watchdog agency. (may require
registration)
Modern
Healthcare
RFID Boosts Heart Facility's
Care
Dallas-based Heart Hospital Baylor Plano has implemented an RFID
solution that automates nearly all of the facility's inventory
tracking, from the most expensive devices down to the number of
sponges and syringes. "Hospitals are going to have to adopt this,"
said John Gavras, president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital
Council. "I see it happening within the next two to three years,
easily."
Victor Godinez, The Dallas
Morning News
IBM Targets Healthcare Market with Grid
Computing
Hospitals have unique and challenging storage needs because they
are required to store every X-ray and medical record they create,
and IBM is reaching out to that market with a system being unveiled
Wednesday. IBM is using the concept of grid computing - many
computers linked together to share processing power - to store and
retrieve medical images and other records within a group of
hospitals.
Computerworld
Healthcare Goes Horizontal
Systems developed in isolation within an area lead to fragmented
environments lacking interoperability. Ask the folks at Ontario,
whose healthcare network operated in silos -- until the Canadian
province developed a unified healthcare system. Shifting from a
vertical to a horizontal regional model is a major change for
Ontario. Now over two years into re-organization along
regional lines, the 14 fledgling LHINs must learn to speak with one
voice and their systems must talk to one another. Their impact is
being felt in many areas and will continue to grow as they
integrate disjointed parts into a provincial system.
CIO
India
StatCom Announces the Appointment of Vishy
Narayanan as VP of Engineering
StatCom appointed Vishy Narayanan as vice president of
engineering. Narayanan joins the company's senior leadership team
and will be responsible for streamlining engineering operations and
managing product development, content development, and quality
assurance. StatCom's unique hospital-wide enterprise solution
focuses on optimizing patient throughput and capacity by managing
patient flow from admission to discharge.
TechLinks
AHA Leadership Summit
July 22-24, 2007 -- San Diego,
CA -- Manchester Grand Hyatt
Visit StatCom at booth #609
Vision Center Allows Visitors to Experience
Patient Flow Logistics and Tracking up Close
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.
StatCom