Patient Safety

Medical identity fraud has increased nearly 20 percent compared to the year before in the U.S., affecting an estimated 1.84 victims and having a total out-of-pocket medical costs incurred by medical identity theft victims to be $12.3 billion. Those are takeaways of the 2013 Survey on Medical Identity Theft, an annual survey now in its fourth year, which was released yesterday by the Ponemon Institute LLC, Traverse City, Mich., and sponsored by Portland, Ore.-base ID Experts. The report’s release roughly coincided with the launch (on August 29) of the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA), an industry group formed to raise public awareness and to come up with potential ways to address the medical identity theft.

A new 24/7 remote monitoring system from the Mayo Clinic will improve care and shorten hospital stays for critically ill patients, according to Mayo officials in a recent announcement. The Enhanced Critical Care program will offer monitoring of the sickest patients at six Mayo Clinic Health System hospitals.

The Medical Center of Central Georgia recently transitioned to CPOE, but the hospital remains in the minority of those that had done so until very recently. Meanwhile, the challenges that linger for the hospitals that have yet to get on board remain tough to overcome.

Having an effective response plan is critical for mitigating the impact of downtime, and your organization has likely put a tremendous amount of thought and care into its contingency plan. But your plan may have an Achilles’ heel that your organization is completely unaware of—a weakness that could leave your organization as poorly prepared as if you had no contingency plan at all. Where are the holes in your plan? Find them by asking a simple question: What is the longest hypothetical outage you have planned for?

Emergency departments are not meeting the needs of senior citizens, according to a international study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.