Federal Stimulus Package Fuels Demand for Health IT
Professionals
Information Week
As hospitals and physician practices gear up to comply with
federal requirements to qualify for stimulus incentives of more
than $20 billion, the need to hire new people for their IT
departments is paramount. Among the specific jobs that health care
CIOs plan to hire during the last quarter are technical and
help-desk support, information security and networking, according
to a survey by IT staffing company Robert Half Technology.
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The Absence of Market Capitalism Broke
Healthcare
Jim Rosenblum, Dialogues in Healthcare
Transformation
Name something you purchase without knowing the cost, the quality
or the best use of the product you are buying. A root cause for
what is popularly thought of as "America's Healthcare Problem" is
that market capitalism has been taken out of the mix. Consumers of
healthcare are not the purchasers of healthcare. The purchasers of
healthcare (payors) are large employers and insurance companies
that negotiate with providers to determine reimbursement rates for
procedures.
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True Cost of Stimulus Won't Be Known For
Years
Neil Versel, FierceEMR
There seem to be a lot of questions about just how much money the
federal government is allocating for EMRs as part of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For hospitals, the formula is highly
complicated. Institutions that achieve meaningful use of EMRs
starting in 2011 can earn a baseline annual incentive of $2
million, plus an extra $200 paid per discharge for the 1,150th
through 23,000th discharge per year. And the total payout will be
adjusted according to each hospital's level of charity care and
Medicare population. Good luck pinpointing how much Uncle Sam will
owe in that category.
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Social Networking Fuels Online Health
Sites
The Washington Post
The number of health Web sites has increased from about 35 in 2005
to almost 500 due in part to the popularity of social networking
and the desire of patients to make informed decisions about their
health. One health-focused social networking Web site is Inspire,
which allows its 130,000 members to share their health issues and
experiences with treatment options.
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101 Ways to Use Twitter in Your Hospital
LPN to RN blog
Nurses are an essential part of hospitals and can function as a
communication lifeline to patients, doctors, and others in the
facility. These days, there are lots of different tools you can use
to communicate, but Twitter is an exciting one to consider, just
because it holds so much potential. Read on, and you'll learn about
101 different ways you can use Twitter in your hospital.
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The Media: An Essential, If Sometimes Arbitrary,
Promoter of Patient Safety
Robert M. Wachter, MD, AHRQ webM&M
December 1 marks the tenth anniversary of the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) report To Err Is Human, the blockbuster that
launched the modern patient safety movement. The anniversary
provides an opportunity to reflect on the forces that have promoted
safety efforts over the past decade. They include a more robust
accreditation environment, increased reporting of adverse events to
state and other regulatory bodies, growing implementation of
information technology, skill-building support by organizations
such as Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and a maturing
research field supported by AHRQ and others.
Read
more
Five Lessons on How to Get Physicians to Adopt
CPOE
Carrie Vaughan, HealthLeaders Media
I often read or hear about "physician buy-in" - as I'm sure most
of you do too - as the key component to successfully implementing
many IT projects, including computerized physician order entry.
While I agree that physicians need to join the effort for CPOE to
be successful, I also think there is a lot more behind the
successful implementations - like dogged persistence.
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The Future of Nursing is Up for Debate
Rebecca Hendren, HealthLeaders Media
It's not very often that one gets a chance to contribute to a
nationwide public debate that just might result in changes to your
profession. But that's what the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in
collaboration with the Institute of Medicine, is calling for as
part of a major study on the future of nursing. As well as securing
the opinion of nursing experts from around the country, the study
will also be examining testimony submitted from individuals and
organizations in the field.
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Top 10 Challenges for Meaningful Use in
Hospitals
CSC Healthcare Group
This report by CSC Healthcare Group highlights 10 barriers that
hospitals must overcome to achieve meaningful use of EHRs, such as
integrating decision support into CPOE, managing new types of
electronic information, and sharing data with patients and other
clinicians electronically. The report also advises hospitals to
place clinical and operational executives in leadership roles and
make the implementation a highly coordinated effort rather than as
a series of separate projects.
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Systems Management in Healthcare Top 12 Best
Practices
KACE
This white paper outlines best practices for systems
administration and IT professionals in healthcare environments.
Based on real-life experiences of IT professionals in the medical
field, it outlines best practices for IT professionals fighting to
keep IT systems healthy -- just as they want their patients to be.
(Registration)
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Outsourcing Discharge Follow-up Calls Keeps Nurses at
the Bedside
Mark Williard, HealthLeaders Media
Study after study has shown that patients who have more
interaction with nurses express higher satisfaction rates and
increasing nursing time at the bedside has been shown to improve
overall quality scores. The challenge is to reduce the
administrative burden nurses carry so they can spend more time at
the bedside. Given the positive effect nurses have on patient
satisfaction and quality, reducing the administrative burdens of
frontline nurses should be one of the top priorities for nursing
managers.
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Side-by-Side Comparison of Major Health Care Reform
Proposals
Kaiser Family Foundation
Achieving comprehensive health reform has emerged as a leading
priority of the President and Congress. President Obama has
outlined eight principles for health reform, seeking to address not
only the 45 million people who lack health insurance, but also
rising health care costs and lack of quality. In Congress, a number
of comprehensive reform proposals have been announced as the debate
proceeds over how to overhaul the health care system. This
interactive side-by-side compares the leading comprehensive reform
proposals across a number of key characteristics and plan
components.
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more
Using Health Information Technology to Improve Patient
Care in a Community Health Center in Washington
Healthreform.gov
Nearly 50 million Americans living in rural areas face challenges
accessing health care. Developing a health information technology
(IT) infrastructure can improve the quality and continuity of care
for millions of patients. This new report examines how the Columbia
Basin Health Association in Othello, Wash., uses health information
technology to improve health care quality and patient safety as
well as promote care coordination and continuity.
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more
Karl Straub Named President of Statcom
Jackson Healthcare
Jackson Healthcare is pleased to announce the appointment of Karl
Straub as president of StatCom, developer of the industry's first
Hospital Operating System, a comprehensive patient throughput
solution that enables hospitals to achieve maximum operational
performance and substantial reductions in average length of stay.
StatCom prioritizes patient throughput actions across hospital
departments, allowing patients to flow at their best possible rate
with respect to service, quality, safety and resource consumption,
greatly enhancing the patient and staff experience.
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From the C-Side
Paul Levy on Why CEOs Should Blog: Your Job As CEO Is To
Represent What's Going On
FierceHealthcare
As many of you know, Paul Levy, CEO of Boston's Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center, is an avid blogger who advocates for more
transparency in healthcare (he even disclosed his own compensation
package and asked folks to comment on whether they think he's
overpaid). Anne Zieger, FierceHealthcare's senior editor who named
Levy as one of nine people to watch in healthcare, recently talked
with Levy about how his views on blogging have evolved over the
years.
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Tough Times Demand Tough Leaders
Thought Leaders
It's time for business leaders to snap out of their collective
funk and start building for the future, writes Mike Figliuolo.
"Your organization is looking at the market as a big dark scary
room," he writes. "Your job is to flip on the lights." That means
eliminating fear and doubt, taking a few calculated risks and
investing for the long term.
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The Six Greatest Failures of Hospital Strategic Plans,
Part 2
Scott Regan
Part I discussed "The Six Greatest Failures of Hospital Strategic
Plans." Reasons Nos. 1, 2, and 3 were mission and vision are AWOL,
form-filling in place of analysis, and failure of leadership. We
continue our discussion with reasons 4, 5, and 6. Reason #4: Lack
of Focus. In a July survey of hospital executives, 51% of
respondents admitted to having 21 or more strategic plan
objectives. An additional 19% had 11 to 20 objectives - meaning
that seven out of 10 hospitals are currently chasing more than 10
strategic plan objectives this year.
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4 Tips for Collaborating With Another
Company
Industry Week
To innovate outside your company's traditional areas of expertise,
try forming a strategic partnership with a company in a
noncompeting industry, writes George Young. Executives from
companies such as Coca-Cola and Unilever explain how they spurred
growth by creating partnerships with other companies, creating
common goals and establishing trust to increase
collaboration.
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Why are More Hospital Executives Pursuing
M-degrees?
Karen M. Cheung, Health Leaders Media
More physician executives are currently pursing post-graduate
business degrees, according to a new report, 2009 Physician
Executive Compensation Survey, from Cejka Search. Why do physicians
spend the extra time and money for advanced business and management
degrees? For many, it's a pathway to advancing their career.
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