April 22, 2011 Kayt Sukel
article
Focus: Patients and the EHR Former President George W. Bush called for the widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014. With that
April 18, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
The 13-bed Collingsworth General Hospital in Wellington, Texas, has had many unique challenges, not unlike the other 77 critical access hospitals (CAHs) in the state, and the 1,324 in the U.S. Not only do rural hospitals have limited staffs—Collingsworth has only two physicians—these organizations have limited funds for information technology implementations. To aid its transition to electronic medical records (EMRs), Collingsworth secured one of only 16 national grants from the federal Flex-HIT Program. The $1.2 million grant was administered by the Office of Rural Community Affairs’ Texas State Office of Rural Health, a state agency which oversees programs to increase rural communities’ access to healthcare.
April 14, 2011 By John DeGaspari
blog
With the March 31 release by the Department of Health and Human Services of the proposed rules on accountable care organizations, many health providers are assessing their readiness to participate in the development of ACOs. I recently had an opportunity to ask Jacqueline Dailey, who since January has served as the vice president of IT solutions for medical science, research and patient-centered accountable care for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Previously she was the CIO of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
April 12, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Winchester Medical Center, a 411-bed community hospital in Winchester, Va., part of the six-hospital Valley Health system in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, has been taking an innovative approach to inpatient education. The hospital has been using patient engagement software from the Bethesda, Md.-based GetWellNetwork since 2003. Currently, the hospital has 360 beds live with the service and has implemented some key applications including a falls pathway, pain management pathway, and service recovery pathway. Beginning in 2008 the results from the patient engagement software fed back into the hospital’s electronic medical record (EMR) from the San Francisco, Calif.-based McKesson, and a GetWellNetwork tab was added in the EMR so clinicians could verify that patients watched certain education videos and record patient pain assessments.
April 7, 2011 Mark Hagland
article
With the release by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the proposed rule for accountable care organization (ACO) development on March 31, experts having been poring over the details of the rule and analyzing its implications for providers of different types. One industry expert who sees ACO development as an expert-level type of enterprise is Paul Keckley, Ph.D., who leads the Washington, D.C.-based Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, a division of the global Deloitte consulting firm
March 29, 2011 Mark Hagland
article
Among the integrated healthcare systems around the nation whose leaders have committed firmly and publicly to continuous quality transformation has been Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, a seven-hospital system based in Memphis. The system has received numerous recognitions for its quality of care, and has been a leader in receiving incentive payments from the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) program, co-sponsored by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Charlotte-based Premier Inc. health alliance.
March 23, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
The challenges involved in interfacing pharmacy systems with core clinical information systems are propelling IT leadership to seek an enterprise approach and move towards integration.
March 23, 2011 Mark Hagland
article
Craig Roy, who has been with Radiology Associates of Sacramento (RAS) for more than 14 years, first as director of IS and then as CIO, has been focused intensely on improving and optimizing the informatics landscape for his 60-plus-physician medical group, Radiology Associates of Sacramento. As Radiology Associates of Sacramento, already the largest private radiology group in Northern California, has continued to grow and expand, the need for its physicians to make use of interoperability solutions has become more and more pronounced
March 21, 2011 Charlene Marietti
blog
The big question of how best to marry technology to a high touch/low tech business was tackled at an Environments for Aging (EFA) conference roundtable moderated by Jon Sanford, M. Arch, director of the Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access at the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology held on March 21 in Atlanta. The discussion was lively and sprinkled with concerns, admonitions, and positive outlooks.
March 14, 2011 David Raths
article
During a March 10 California eHealth stakeholder webinar, leaders of the state’s three regional extension centers (RECs) gave progress reports on enrolling physicians in programs to meaningfully use electronic health records (EHRs).
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 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
With meaningful use requirements mandating the act of health information exchange, HIEs are set to evolve forward rapidly to meet myriad needs for the exchange of vital data and information going forward. Yet even as HIE development picks up pace, the “elephant in the room” around their development remains the overarching, yet unavoidable, question of sustainability.
