Carl Natale, ICD10 Watch
“In a recent conversation, ICD-10 trainer and consultant Kristi Stanton told me that it’s going to be a significant issue for ICD-10-PCS coding. Thus it’s a huge challenge for hospitals. The impact won’t be as big for physicians in medical practices.
[ More ]
Luke Gale, CMIO
“A commentary published by the Journal of the American Medical Association proposes ways in which the U.S. can affordably meet the needs and expectations of both the public and healthcare providers as an interconnected system of EHRs is developed at the national level.
[ More ]
Ken Terry, InformationWeek
“Hard on the heels of an Institute of Medicine report on regulating the safety of electronic health records (EHRs) and related health IT tools, Ashish K. Jha, MD, and David C. Classen, MD, two of the report’s coauthors, called for patient safety measures to be included in Meaningful Use requirements.
[ More ]
Singh H et al, Journal of Patient Safety, 2011
Electronic health records (EHRs) have potential quality and safety benefits. However, reports of EHR-related safety hazards are now emerging. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology recently sponsored an Institute of Medicine committee to evaluate how health information technology use affects patient safety. In this article, we propose the creation of a national EHR oversight program to provide dedicated surveillance of EHR-related safety hazards and to promote learning from identified errors, close calls, and adverse events. The program calls for data gathering, investigation/analysis, and regulatory components. The first 2 functions will depend on institution-level EHR safety committees that will investigate all known EHR-related adverse events and near-misses and report them nationally using standardized methods.
[ More ]
Horner K et al, Issue Brief (Commonwealth Fund), 23
Electronic consultation (e-consultation) is an emerging tool that primary care clinicians can use to communicate with specialists about patients asynchronously–that is, at different times that are convenient for each physician. To conduct an e-consultation, clinicians use either a Web-based program or a shared electronic medical record.
[ More ]
Hohberger C et al, Biologicals, 2011
ISO/IEC 18000-3 mode 1 standard 13.56 MHz RFID tags have been accepted by the International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as data carriers to integrate with and augment ISBT 128 barcode data carried on blood products. The use of 13.56 MHz RFID carrying ISBT 128 data structures allows the global deployment and use of RFID, supporting both international transfer of blood and international disaster relief.
[ More ]
Benefits Realization is a strategy for quality improvement used by the Alberta Health Services Information Technology Department. The approach is currently used within the enterprise-wide, ambulatory care IT initiative “eCLINICIAN.”
[ More ]
Aitor Guitarte, Somos Medicina
“Cuando hablamos de sistemas de gestión hospitalaria informatizada, no nos cansamos de repetir que debe prevalecer el paciente, su seguridad y el respeto a su privacidad. El flujo de datos debe ser codificado y encriptado, debemos contar con medios informáticos apropiados y adaptados que además requieren formación del personal (sanitario o no) en seguridad informática para minimizar fallos de seguridad, que tienen en origen un error humano.
[ More ]
Robert Rowley, EHR Bloggers
“Recently, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), chartered by the National Academy of Sciences to advise the federal government on issues of medical care, research and education, delivered a publication on Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care.
[ More ]
RFID Solutions Online
“A wheel chair costs about $150, but in a week, a hospital’s staff can spend up to $7,000 in clinical time just searching for one. Nearly 90% of all hospital patients will require an IV, but overstocking to compensate for lost or misplaced infusion pumps can cost the typical hospital $150,000 or more annually.
[ More ]
Claire Swedberg, RFID Journal
“The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking proposals for its Veterans Health Administration (VHA) division from real-time location system (RTLS) software and hardware vendors—which it plans to begin accepting next month—for a $550 million RFID project to equip all 23 of its Veteran Integrated Service Networks (VISNs), each consisting of various health-care facilities. Altogether, the VISN group consists of 152 medical centers and 1,400 community clinics and non-patient VHA facilities, each equipped with RFID technology.
[ More ]
Nicole Lewis, InformationWeek Healthcare
“ICD-10 implementation promises to be complex, costly, and burdensome, so healthcare CIOs and IT managers can use all the help they can get. InformationWeek Healthcare recently interviewed Beth Mahan, principal at Booz Allen Hamilton’s healthcare division to help shed some light on the issues leading up to the October 2013 conversion deadline.
[ More ]
Ken Terry, InformationWeek
“More than 80% of hospitals either participate in or plan to join a health information exchange, according to a recent survey by Capsite, a healthcare technology research and advisory firm. Of the 340 hospital respondents, 32% said they were already involved in an HIE, and 47% said they intended to join an exchange.
[ More ]
Nicole Lewis, InformationWeek Healthcare
“The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, through its annual industry innovation competition VAi2, recently selected American Well and SweetSpot Diabetes Care, Inc., to collaborate on separate initiatives that will bring telehealth services to veterans in their homes.
[ More ]
Gillian Hayes, Project HealthDesign
“Anyone doing research about records of any kind knows the challenges of handling missing data. We often hear about epidemiologists who struggle to find patterns in incomplete data sets, clinicians who carefully interview patients and family members to fill in the gaps in a medical record, and so on. This problem becomes particularly acute, however, when you are monitoring the data in real time.
[ More ]
Luke Gale, CMIO
“Researchers investigating the effects of EHRs on healthcare outcomes at three Twin Cities-based emergency departments (ED) expected the presence of documentation available in EHRs to have a measurable positive effect on clinical decision-making, but the results of their study failed to make a conclusive determination.
[ More ]
Connelly DP et al, J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2011
Objective
To evaluate if electronic health records (EHR) have observable effects on care outcomes, we examined quality and efficiency measures for patients presenting to emergency departments (ED).
Materials and methods
We conducted a retrospective study of 5166 adults with heart failure in three metropolitan EDs. Patients were termed internal if prior information was in the EHR upon ED presentation, otherwise external. Associations of internality with hospitalization, mortality, length of stay (LOS), and numbers of tests, procedures, and medications ordered in the ED were examined after adjusting for age, gender, race, marital status, comorbidities and hospitalization as a proxy for acuity level where appropriate.
[ More ]
Sabrina Rodak, Becker's Hospital Review
“The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has submitted comments (pdf) on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s draft guidance on “Technical Evaluation, Testing and Validation of the Usability of Electronic Health Records.”
[ More ]
M Neelam Kachhap, Express Healthcare
“Watson, the IBM supercomputer is believed to have revolutionised the healthcare industry with its analytical capabilities. Having won the USD one million “Jeopardy!” challenge and establishing its power, Watson is now moving towards challenges in healthcare.
[ More ]
Ann W. Latner, Clinical Advisor
“Electronic health records (EHRs) seem like a good idea at first glance. These systems can provide more accurate health records, record treatments, reduce errors based on handwriting and provide all treating health-care providers with access to the same patient data.
[ More ]
