St. John's Mercy Medical Center focus is on
efficiency
Mary Jo Feldstein, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Hospitals nationwide, including those in the St. Louis area, are
beginning to adopt concepts that will ultimately enhance the
quality of care and make facilities more efficient, taking a lesson
from manufacturing companies that have been employing such tools
for decades. Hospitals across the St. Louis area - and the country
- are employing the concepts and tools used for decades by
manufacturing companies to make operations more efficient and
quality more consistent. Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma are
overlapping process-improvement strategies that aim to take the
waste out of a process while standardizing the process itself.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/healthcare/story/
0C26B0477B517516862574C700090370?OpenDocument
ER Care, Stat!
Sandra G. Boodman, The Washington Post
HealthPlex's full-service emergency department, which can treat
everything from heart attacks to finger "lacs" (ER-speak for
laceration), sees close to 33,000 patients annually, nearly as many
as the emergency department at Georgetown University Hospital.
Unlike traditional emergency rooms, it has no inpatient beds.
Patients who need hospitalization or surgery are transferred by
ambulance to surrounding hospitals, most to Inova Fairfax, seven
miles away. Experts say that HealthPlex, which opened in 2001 and
is designed to divert patients from the ERs Inova operates at
Alexandria, Fairfax and Mount Vernon hospitals, is an innovative,
patient-friendly response to one of the gravest problems facing the
fraying health-care system: overcrowded ERs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203002.html
Stark plans to introduce healthcare IT
legislation
HealthDataManagement
U.S. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., chairman of the Ways and Means
health subcommittee, is planning to introduce legislation that
would advocate the development of an open-source electronic health
record. The proposed bill also would add more specifications about
violating patient-privacy laws.
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/legislation26946-1.html
HIMSS identifies global EHR implementation
trends
HealthcareITNews
Four factors affect how EHRs are implemented around the world,
according to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems
Society: funding, governance, communication and standardization,
and interoperability. A 119-page report explains in detail and
looks at the status of EHR projects in 15 countries.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9927
Providers link HIE to lower costs, improved
outcomes
HealthImagingNews
Electronic health information exchange (HIE) between physicians,
hospitals, payors and patients is decreasing the cost of care and
improving outcomes, according to a new survey released by the
non-profit eHealth Initiative. The 2008 Fifth Annual Survey of
Health Information Exchange at the State and Local Levels, which
included responses from 130 community-based initiatives in 48
states, shows the significant impact fully operational initiatives
are having on improving healthcare delivery and efficiency.
According to the survey results, 69 percent of the fully
operational exchange efforts reported reductions in healthcare
costs.
http://www.healthimaging.com/content/view/12096/89/
Hospitals invest in RFID at explosive rate
EHEALTH Smartbrief
The use of RFID technology is exploding in hospital facilities
with more than 300 beds as a way to contain costs, track assets and
patients, and improve patient care, according to a study by
California-based Spyglass Consulting Group. The study also found
that cost, questions about return on investment and the lack of
interoperability with some devices still present a barrier for some
groups.
http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/archive/08/09/013.html
Case study: KY hospital ED cuts patient wait times with
EMR
Daily Leader
King's Daughters Medical Center has steadily implemented new
technology and techniques throughout 2008 that have cut almost in
half patients' waiting time during visits to the emergency room.
KDMC Chief Nursing Officer Merlene Myrick said the emergency
department's new gear has reduced patients' LOS (length of stay)
from 220 minutes, recorded during the first week of February, to
118 minutes, record throughout June. The June average is two
minutes under the department's LOS goal of 120 minutes, and the
most recent department best is 90 minutes.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20096721&BRD=1377&PAG=461&dept_id=172922&rfi=6
Google and Microsoft look to change
healthcare
New York Times
Google and Microsoft have begun working on plans to improve the
nation's healthcare. The two will combine the Web's resources,
online health records, and enhanced Internet search tools to
ultimately help people make better choices when it comes to their
healthcare. By combining better Internet search tools, the vast
resources of the Web and online personal health records, both
companies are betting they can enable people to make smarter
choices about their health habits and medical care. Google and
Microsoft recognize the obstacles, and they concede that changing
health care will take time. But the companies see the potential in
attracting a large audience for health-related advertising and
services. And both companies bring formidable advantages to the
consumer market for such technology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/technology/14healthnet.html?_r=2&scp=3&sq=business,%20healthcare&st=cse&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Standards of care in the ER: The emergency waiting
game
Thomas A. Sharon
The emergency room is the place where most of us enter the
health-care system. Many are there with undiagnosed
life-threatening conditions when they first arrive. Their survival
depends on how fast and accurately the staffers diagnose and treat
their problems. Most emergency rooms can at times get so crammed
full that they become unsafe. Accordingly, there are three
determining factors in getting -or preventing- a good result in the
emergency department. These are triage, waiting time, and
capacity.
http://legalnurseconsultanttom.com/?p=205
Brothers in arms
Cristina De Martini, Health Management Technology
Scanning recent headlines, it is difficult to ignore the fact
that radio-frequency identification (RFID) is receiving
substantially more ink than bar coding. Even in healthcare, the
consensus seems to be that bar coding is no longer cutting-edge and
that RFID is the newer, more advanced auto-identification solution
that healthcare IT leaders have been searching for. However, the
origins of the two technologies reveal that they have peacefully
coexisted for several decades.
http://www.healthmgttech.com/features/2008_september/0908_thought_leaders.aspx
BJC opens up its books
STLtoday.com
St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare recently laid out its financial
position and plans for the future in a recent bond filing. About
one in three admissions to a St. Louis-area hospital go to one of
BJC's nine area hospitals, and this market dominance hasn't changed
much over the last 10 years, said Chief Executive Steve Lipstein.
Maintaining that position requires constant investment in new
technology and new facilities, a strong physician referral system,
and a profitable mix of patients, he said.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/columnists.nsf/maryjofeldstein/story/
1308F12B5AE354DA862574C0000793A4?OpenDocument
The new C-suite: Sailing the seven Cs (Part
1&2)
William K. Cors, MD, for HealthLeaders News
Healthcare leaders need to reinvent the C-suite and establish a
new set of leadership skills to help them address the challenging
nature of hospital-physician competition and collaboration.
Part 1
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/218370/topic/WS_HLM2_LED/The-New-Csuite-Sailing-the-Seven-Cs-Part-1.html
Part 2
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/218810/topic/WS_HLM2_LED/The-New-Csuite-Sailing-the-Seven-Cs-Part-2.html
The Healthcare CIO: Jonathan Teich, M.D. Chief Medical
Informatics Officer, Elsevier
Health Management Technology
The CIO is traditionally someone who has operational
responsibility for the information technology of an organization,
and certainly plays an important role in supporting those needs
across the hospital. Generally, the CMIO is a person, usually a
physician, who provides a bridge between practical medical needs
and information technology capabilities. Usually, it is someone who
has a solid understanding of both, and who is there to translate
clinical strategy into information technology possibilities and
vice versa.
http://www.healthmgttech.com/features/2008_september/0908_cio.aspx
Unclear on how to get the right healthcare providers?
Let Healthcare Job Boards bring things into focus
Health Management Technology
Steady demand will fuel the growth of the healthcare industry.
As the demographic of the population gets older, the need for
health care resources increases. According to the latest numbers
from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August, 2008 alone,
nearly 27,000 employees were added to the industry. Employers need
assistance in filling open positions quickly because of the
industry growth. How do employers fill these key rolls quickly?
Healthcare Job Board is the leading provider of career concierge
sites dedicated to the healthcare market. The portfolio of sites
--TherapyJobs.com, MDSearch.com, medreps.com, RNSearch.com, and
ICUNursingJobs.com -- offer qualified job seekers and healthcare
employers a place to connect and simplifies the matching
process.
http://www.healthcarejobboards.com/focus/