State of Emergency
In a lot of hospitals, the ED is the problem child no one talks
about. CEOs boast about their new Women's Health Center and low
turnover but they quietly dismiss their ED's "left without being
seen" rate or dismal patient satisfaction scores. An experienced ED
manager once told me that he's surprised how many CEOs discount the
ED as a loss. CEOs who do regular hospital walk-throughs often skip
their EDs, and employee appreciation events don't include ED staff.
When it comes to the emergency department, have CEOs just thrown in
the towel? Not all of them. In this month's HealthLeaders magazine
cover story, I write about three hospitals that have overcome their
ED angst. Through staff changes, reorganization of existing space,
creative scheduling, and a focus on customer service, they've
caused ED turnarounds without building multi-million-dollar
facilities.
Molly Rowe, Health Leaders Media
Democrats Create Task Force to Push Health IT, Incentive
Programs
Three former healthcare professionals turned Democratic
lawmakers are forming a congressional task force with the intent of
pushing through stalled legislation. Their agenda is heavy with
information technology provisions, preventive-care measures and
provider incentives, yet light on details. Reps. Lois Capps
(D-Calif.), a former nurse; Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), a former
healthcare administrator; and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), a one-time
hospital executive, will lead a task force that's part of a broader
voting bloc of Democrats whose aim is to advance long-discussed
proposals that have become casualties of congressional
wrangling.
Matthew DoBias, Modern Healthcare Online
2008 Predictions for Trends in Healthcare
As costs and the numbers of uninsured keep trending upward,
health care has emerged as the most important domestic issue of
2008. Here are PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute's
predictions for the top eight health industry issues of the coming
year.
Julius A.
Karash, Kansascity.com
HHS Says It's on Target with '1,000-Day Plan' for
IT
HHS officials seem confident that they'll be able to meet all 16
objectives of the department's "1,000-day plan" on health
information technology by year-end. The plan was initiated in May
2006 as a management tool by HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. Its
purpose is to help advance the larger goal of having the majority
of Americans acquire electronic health records by 2014, Karen Bell,
director of HHS' Office of Health IT Adoption in the Office of the
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, said last
week. The plan encompasses four major goals, which include
interconnecting healthcare, personalizing health management.
Jennifer Lubell, Modern Healthcare Online
Ignoring the Skeptics
Several recent studies and surveys suggest growing skepticism
about the longevity of regional health information organizations,
aka "RHIOs." Nearly 70 percent of respondents to our own recent
unscientific online poll agreed that most RHIOs will cease
operations within the near future. Although most people understand
the importance of data sharing across competitive organizations,
many are wondering if the multitude of RHIOs will have staying
power. Financial and governance issues -- not the technological
capability in play -- are often cited as stumbling blocks.
Gary Baldwin, Health Leaders Media
ER Wait Times Getting Longer, Study Finds
Patients seeking urgent care in U.S. emergency rooms are waiting
longer than in the 1990s, especially people with heart attacks.
They found a quarter of heart attack victims waited 50 minutes or
more before seeing a doctor in 2004. Waits for all types of
emergency department visits became 36 percent longer between 1997
and 2004, the team at Harvard Medical School reported.
Reuters,
msnbc.com
USC Engineers Report Dramatic Improvements in Hospital
Efficiency Using Industrial and Systems Engineering
Techniques
Mounting evidence suggests that industrial and systems
engineering can help large, overcrowded hospitals find new ways to
move patients as swiftly as a river through the health care system,
which helps the medical centers reduce costs and improve service.
"Patient flow is, perhaps, the most telltale indicator of how well
a hospital is functioning," said Randolph Hall, an industrial and
systems engineer in the Viterbi School and USC vice provost for
research advancement. "When the system works well, patients flow
like a river through the hospital; each stage of their care is
completed with minimal delay. But when the system is broken,
patients accumulate like a reservoir, and you find chronic delays,
like those experienced in many big city emergency departments."
USC
Viterbi
Bending the Curve - Options for a High Performance
Health System
Our friends at the Commonwealth Fund have provided us with a
wonderful New Year's present - "Bending The Curve: Options for
Achieving Savings and Improving Value in US Health Spending." Built
upon established facts that US health spending is expected to
increase from 16% ($2 trillion) of the GDP in 2006 to 20% ($4
trillion) of the GDP in 2016, the authors of this detailed and
unique report offer options that have the potential to keep our
spending from increasing so rapidly. The options they present are
in some cases radical and rely heavily on changes in governmental
policies; however, overall, they are plausible solutions providing
an opportunity to control our healthcare spending. They assert that
over the next decade, it would be possible to reduce national
expenditures while simultaneously improving access, quality and
population health.
Christopher Cornue, Hospital Impact blog
An M.D. Legislator Pushes for Electronic Medical
Records
This Wall Street Journal blog item has some lively discussion
around a New Jersey legislator (who is also a physician), who is
promoting EMR technology. Scroll down the page and read through the
comments on financing the technology. The public is far more
sophisticated on these issues than politicians and pundits may
realize.
Posted by Jacob Goldstein, The Wallstreet Journal
State and Local Health IT Spending to Hit $10.8 Billion
in 2012
New investment in Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMIS)
by state and local governments will drive growth in annual spending
on health IT, which is expected to go from $6.9 billion in 2007 to
$10.8 billion in 2012, according to a study released yesterday by
market research firm Input inc.
Heather
B. Hayes, Government Health IT
RFID Moves Beyond Assets
Columbus Regional's I.T. staff worked with Versus and South
Western Communications Inc., Newburgh, Ind., to integrate the new
features with the nurse call system and install an enterprise-wide
RFID network. Now the hospital gives every ED patient an RFID badge
at registration. Clinicians also wear badges. Each patient badge is
embedded with select information via an interface with its
admission-discharge-transfer system, from McKesson.
Beckie Kelly Schuerenberg, Health Data Management