May 16, 2012 Mark Hagland
Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Drex DeFord, in his closing keynote address to the HCI Executive Summit, last week shared with Summit attendees his philosophy of leadership. Refreshingly, DeFord, the current chairman of the CHIME board of directors, believes that CIOs need to get—and stay—outside their comfort zones.
May 15, 2012 Gabriel Perna
Just like a conductor’s score brings together the pieces of an orchestra, information systems bring together the pieces of an accountable care organization (ACO). Many providers, like Banner Health, are beginning to learn that more proven clinical technologies included in an ACO make for a better “score.”
May 11, 2012 Pete Rivera
Well I was sure that there would be major adjustments to be made when I left the military after 21 years. I guess the biggest cultural change came down to the uniform. In the military you always know who is in charge by all the “ornaments” in the uniform. The more the colors and “bling,” the higher up the food chain they are, especially the Army-they are all about the bling!
May 10, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
Health information exchanges are taking a wide variety of approaches around the country to develop value-added services to sustain their exchanges. Panelists of the "Health Information Exchange: Strategies and Sustainability panel" at the HCI Executive Summit discuss what has worked for their exchanges.
May 10, 2012 Pete Rivera
Reach back to all your old quality training, Deming, Toyota, whatever and at the core it’s the same message; your front line workers really know what’s going on and what workarounds they are using because the existing system is so bad. They are also the first ones to create new workarounds because the brand new system now takes five mouse clicks to do what the old one did in two.
May 10, 2012 Tim Tolan
Many of us dream of what it would be like to wake up one day and do something entirely different (and…I don’t mean doing the same sort of job with a different logo and address). I’m talking about a role unlike anything you’ve ever done. For some, it’s a mid-life crisis that forces us to think about the true meaning of life. Why are we here? For others, it’s a forced lay-off or downsizing event that forces their hand. But for most, it’s the same role year after year.
May 8, 2012 Gwen Darling
In case you missed it, it's been discovered that Scott Thompson, the new CEO of Yahoo, has allowed what he calls an "inaccuracy" to be reflected in his official bio. It seems that Scott didn't feel his (legitimate) degree in business administration with an emphasis in accounting was impressive enough so he fabricated an additional degree in computer science to make himself a better catch.
May 8, 2012 John DeGaspari
A group of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston maintain that resident physician’s participation in a brief training program that is designed to increase empathy with their patients has resulted in significant improvements in how patients perceive their interactions with residents.
May 8, 2012 David Raths
Consumer queries about the accuracy and completeness of patient records are only expected to grow. Some health systems are working on ways to include patient feedback, but no standard approach has yet emerged.
May 6, 2012 Mark Hagland
Halfway through David Muntz’s excellent opening keynote address at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit this afternoon (May 6), I was struck once again by the sense that his having joined the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) four months ago may have marked a significant turning point for the federal agency. Let’s call it the Muntz Effect.
May 4, 2012 Gabriel Perna
With the impending deadline for Stage 2 comments from the ONC, there was bound to be some degree of controversy with the various associations submitting their proposals and comments, and thanks to the American Hospital Association (AHA) we got a good deal of disagreement this week. The AHA caused a stir when it released 68 pages of comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) over the proposed rule for Stage 2 of meaningful use, which generally said the requirements were too much for hospitals to bear.
May 2, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
At an eHealth Initiative Patient-Centered Town Hall on Chronic Disease Management last week, I was inspired by the story of one patient, Julie Cabinaw, user experience director at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services, who conquered obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Not only was it impressive how Cabinaw lost 80 pounds and got her A1C levels back to normal, it was remarkable to hear about the IT interoperability challenges she overcame to do all this.
May 1, 2012 Mark Hagland
Tucked away inside President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2013 year budget are some hopeful statistics around electronic health record adoption, particularly recent figures around office-based physicians' EHR adoption, and the assist that doctors are getting from the federal government's regional extension centers (RECs). Are we reaching an important turning point on the long journey towards the new healthcare?
May 1, 2012 Joe Marion
A framework can build consensus and avoid misunderstandings when implementing a VNA. The framework graphs organizational focus against functional purpose, in an attempt to differentiate the particular needs, and potential emphasis of various vendors. Organizationally, initiatives can be focused around the needs of a single service area such as radiology, and primarily driven by the clinical service area.
May 1, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
Today, May 1, Facebook is stepping into the personal healthcare sphere by adding organ donor status to its Timeline structure, which asks users to check off their status and directs them to Donate Life America's National Registration Page, allowing them to designate a donation decision if they have not done so already. Will this one step lead Facebook closer to becoming the next personal health record?
April 30, 2012 Gabriel Perna
When it comes to patient engagement, one developer has realized many of the current platforms lack an essential element: physician involvement. Steven D. Freedman, M.D. and and Camilla Martin, M.D., from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who are working on their own patient engagement platform, says input from the actual physicians can be a critical missing element in the care-coordination process.
April 30, 2012 John DeGaspari
With the Affordable Care Act under scrutiny by the Supreme Court, I was interested in a piece of good news, reported by The New York Times over the weekend, that the growth in health spending has slowed substantially over the last few years. As noted in the article, healthcare spending grew by less than 4 percent nationally in 2009 and 2010, and its share of the gross domestic product held steady in 2010.
It’s a trend that caught some experts by surprise, and there are a few theories about what’s behind the leveling off of health spending.
April 30, 2012 Joe Bormel, M.D.
Of late, there has been a loud resurgence of the collective physician voice on the topic of healthcare IT mandates.
In effect it is saying, “too much, too fast, with insufficient regard to sustainability, incentives and penalties.” The recent CMS announcement to delay ICD-10 by one year adds credence to this position. Let's break that down into further detail.
April 26, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
HIMSS gets the USA Today treatment today by releasing its first infographic on the increase of social media at its annual conference. As it points out, not only did it have a record-breaking attendance this year, with an attendance increase of 16 percent to 36,531 attendees at HIMSS12 vs. 31,500 attendees at HIMSS11, it broke new records in volume of tweets for healthcare conferences. (I wonder what RSNA has to say about that?)
April 26, 2012 David Raths
About a year ago, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School launched an intriguing research project to study what would happen if patients had regular access to their primary care physicians’ notes about their visits. On April 25, the investigators discussed some of their findings during a National eHealth Collaborative webinar.
