February 11, 2013 Mark Hagland
article
James E. Levin, M.D., Ph.D., CMIO at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, died unexpectedly on Feb. 10 while traveling on business. Dr. Levin, 55, was a nationally recognized pioneer in medical informatics, and had helped guide his colleagues at Children’s of Pittsburgh, part of the vast 20-plus-hospital University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) health system, through industry-leading innovations in clinical innovation and electronic health record (EHR)-driven clinical performance improvement.
February 7, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
article
On Feb. 7, public officials and healthcare IT leaders gathered in Manhattan to celebrate the ongoing success of a New York City IT initiative. Among those speaking were New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, M.D., and CDC Director Thomas Frieden, M.D.
February 6, 2013 Mark Hagland
blog
When Carolyn Clancy, M.D., announced on Jan. 31 that she was leaving the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which she had headed for almost exactly 10 years (she became that agency’s director on Feb. 5, 2003, after previously working at the agency as director of its Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research), it signaled the end of an era.
February 6, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
news
A new report from the American Medical Association (AMA) outlines a list of five responsibilities physicians in outpatient settings should consider when caring for patients who have recently completed a hospital stay.
January 30, 2013 Mark Hagland
article
Leaders at the American Health Quality Association recently showcased the release of an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that documented an impressive decline in avoidable hospitalizations and readmissions among Medicare patients in communities in which Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) have coordinated interventions that engaged whole communities in care improvement.
January 28, 2013 Mark Hagland
article
The winning teams in this year's Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards program exemplify the spirit of pioneering innovation in our industry
January 28, 2013 John DeGaspari
article
An interdisciplinary team of clinicians, informaticists, and quality experts at NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, Ill., has taken a major step in controlling this disease in its outpatient population, by harnessing its electronic health record (EHR) to screen for and evaluate individuals with previously undetected hypertension in its multi-specialty medical group. The system, which went live in January 2011, has helped the integrated health system make significant progress in eliminating undiagnosed hypertension among its patients receiving care within its primary care network.
January 28, 2013 Gabriel Perna
article
Whether it’s through better communication or simple amenities, even the most optimistic leader at a hospital will tell you there is no perfect path to perfect patient satisfaction. However, thanks to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) mandatory Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) initiative, hospitals across the country are certainly going to try to achieve that formula.
January 9, 2013 John DeGaspari
blog
At a time of rancorous political divisions, it’s worth noting that most Americans are deeply concerned about the quality of healthcare—in particular, medical research. In a poll by Research!America, 72 percent of respondents say the new Congress and the President should take immediate action to expand medical research within the first hundred days of the 113th Congress. Their views are relevant as Congress considers funding cuts that could affect medical research, but it also suggests that healthcare issues in general are topmost on many people’s minds.
January 2, 2013 John DeGaspari
news
Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person's medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes.
December 27, 2012 Mark Hagland
news
A new study is casting a harsh light on so-called “never events” in the surgical sphere, finding that such adverse events, which can include leaving a sponge inside a patient or operating on the wrong side of the body, led to malpractice litigation in more than 4,000 instances every year, and cost healthcare professionals at least $1.3 billion in malpractice payouts between 1990 and 2010.
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.
