February 14, 2013 Gabriel Perna
article
In this Healthcare Informatics podcast, Associate Editor Gabriel Perna interviews Gerald Creel, the director of emergency department at Shannon Medical Center, a 400-bed hospital in San Angelo, Texas. Shannon won third place in HCI’s recent IT Innovators Award program for implementing an automated radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based system that dealt with the issue of hand-hygiene. As a result of this initiative, Shannon lowered hospital acquired infections by 62 percent.
December 19, 2012 John DeGaspari
news
In an analysis of national malpractice claims, Johns Hopkins patient safety researchers estimate that a surgeon in the United States leaves a foreign object such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient's body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week.
November 24, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
Last year, in an effort to improve the effectiveness of the organization’s OR operations, leaders at GHS began an initiative to install patient tracking systems in the health system’s perioperative areas, beginning with Greenville Memorial Hospital. Work has proceeded apace, and results from the 2011 go-live at Greenville Memorial have been encouraging.
October 22, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
When the University of Missouri Health System sought to optimize its bedside documentation workflows, it chose to enhance its current medication administration devices to allow mobile point-of-care documentation, an innovation that has led to a dramatic advance in speed to documentation of patient data, ultimately improving patient care.
September 28, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Cook Children’s Medical Center, a 428-bed facility in Fort Worth, Texas, has achieved wide adoption of an electronic barcoding system that verifies that medication delivery is correct before pediatric patients receive it. The hospital reports that recent scan rates of medications and patients before treatment are more than 97 percent.
September 23, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
The University of South Alabama Children’s and Women’s Hospital, located in Mobile, Alabama, is pushing ahead to optimize medication administration safety through the strategic implementation of key information systems
July 20, 2011 Gwyndle Kravec
article
The Social Security number (SSN) has evolved over the years from an identification number used primarily when enrolling for Social Security benefits to its present status as the de facto national identifier-and a prime target for identity thieves. Widely used in healthcare as a patient identifier, the SSN nonetheless creates numerous risks for patients, including privacy and security, identity theft, and identity fraud. Indeed, these risks were considered significant enough to prompt the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to assess how hospitals were using and protecting patient SSNs.
May 5, 2011 David Raths
blog
A recent trend at industry conferences is the embedding of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into conference badges. Most attendees are probably unaware of the tracking. Yet some attendees have expressed resentment about having their movements tracked, and as with health information exchanges, questions are being raised about whether conference organizers should change the tracking from opt-out to opt-in participation. When HIMSS announced the RFID tracking last fall, the HIStalk blogger responded that “being tracked as nothing more than a roving sales prospect is just insulting.”
February 27, 2011
blog
Well, another HIMSS is over and all the sore backs and feet should be healed by now. From the land of the Interoperability Showcase, to the farthest reaches of the remaining exhibit halls, the Orange County Convention Center was chock full of interesting technology. The following are but a few that caught my attention.
February 21, 2011 John Degaspari
article
Barcodes are a proven technology for reducing medication administration errors, while RFID tags show promise for tracking of assets as well as personnel and patients. Yet implementation has been slow, as hospitals struggle with cost and complexity issues.
February 17, 2011 John DeGaspari
blog
There are plenty of potential applications for RFID in hospitals. Deciding where the technology makes the most sense requires taking into consideration the costs, benefits and the hospital’s existing infrastructure. One hospital that has spent considerable time and effort into looking at potential RFID applications is Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
February 3, 2011
blog
I recently had an opportunity to speak with Mark Neuenschwander, an expert in drug dispensing automation and an advocate for the use of barcode point-of-care systems in hospitals. His goal, he says, is to “get the nation collectively off the dime and to do barcoding at all points-of-care all of the time.” Neuenschwander estimates that about 35 percent of hospitals in the U.S. now scan medications at the point-of-care, where medications are administered. In 2001, only 3 percent of hospitals used barcoding at the point-of-care to administer medications to patients, he says.
