November / December 2005
NEW PRODUCTS & SERVICES
TRENDS
Free Multimedia Tool Kit for Patient Education on Safety
Recognizing that it's the simple things that can sometimes cause medical setbacks and even tragedies, a national safety initiative is committed to arming 31 million patients with the information they need to have a safer hospital stay.
Despite a six-year campaign to improve hospital safety, 98,000 people still die from medical errors annually. To put this into perspective, each year 4,000 people die during open-heart surgery, while an estimated 103,000 die from hospital-acquired infections. Simple mistakes — such as forgetting to wash hands, making medication errors, and not following the doctor's instructions — cause 27,000 deaths each year.Ý
"By providing some standardized patient education, many of these tragedies could be prevented," says Jordan Dolin, president and CEO of Rightfield Solutions, one of the program sponsors and the creator of EmmiÅ, an innovative Web-based, interactive tool that informs patients about medical conditions and surgical procedures. "With Emmi, we have seen how potentially dangerous situations can be avoided when people are informed and become active participants in their healthcare."
The patient safety tool kit was launched nationally through the Foundation of the American Society
for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM), at ASHRM's national conference in San Antonio, Texas, in October. Program sponsors include ASHRM, which represents 5,000 risk managers throughout the United States, Rightfield Solutions, and the Health Research and Education Trust (HRET).Ý
Among the program's supporters is Sorrel King, a keynote speaker at the conference whose young daughter Josie died due to a medical error.
"My experience taught me how important it is for patients and their families to be proactive during their hospital stay and to have their views heard by the healthcare team," said King, founder of the Josie King Foundation and the Patient Safety Group, which developed an online safety program for hospitals called eCUSP with Johns Hopkins Hospital after her daughter's death. "By providing such valuable information on what patients can do to ensure a safe hospital stay, ASHRM is empowering thousands of risk managers to communicate their organizations' commitment to patients and families to help avoid medical errors."
The patient safety tool kit, a product of the ASHRM Foundation, will be available free of charge to patients and their families throughout the country. The kit includes:Ý
- A five-minute, Web-based version of the patient safety EmmiTM — explaining what patients should do during and after their hospital stay to help prevent mistakes, infections and accidents. Emmi is an interactive communication tool that combines a thorough explanation of a medical procedure or condition. Hospitals can post the patient safety Emmi on their Web sites so patients and families can view it before coming to the hospital. To date, more than 70,000 patients have been provided an Emmi prior to undergoing a surgical or diagnostic procedure. In a survey of over 8,000 viewers, 86 percent of patients stated that Emmi informed them of risks that they had not known about earlier — clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of the platform as a risk management tool.
- A two-minute non-interactive version of the patient safety Emmi will also be made available for broadcast on the hospital's in-room television network.
- A tip sheet for patients and families on what they can do to improve the chances of a safe hospital stay.
Demonstrating its commitment to helping patients become more active participants in their healthcare and invest in their safety, Rightfield Solutions is providing an in-kind contribution of several million dollars for the development of the patient safety Emmi.
"To create safe, trusted healthcare environments, we must find unique and effective ways to educate and empower patients and their families as active participants on the healthcare team," said Elizabeth Summy, executive director, ASHRM. "We are proud to partner with Rightfield Solutions to help give patients information in this medium, with the hope that they will become more engaged in their care and outcomes."Ý
View the Emmi program from the ASHRAM patient safety tool kit at www.emmisafety.com/ashrm.
Source: Rightfield Solutions
Human Factors Pilot Program Launched
Safer Healthcare began the implementation of its Human Factors Demonstration Project at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York and Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The project is designed to study the efficacy of human factors and its application to patient safety in five diverse hospital settings. The AORN Foundation, through funding provided by Kimberly-Clark, selected Safer Healthcare to deliver training, observation, and data collection services to demonstrate the application of U.S. commercial aviation-based crew resource management (CRM) in the operating room.
Safer Healthcare has created targeted curriculum to give patient caregivers the practical teamwork and communication tools and skills required at the departmental level to effectively improve the delivery of care. In October, Safer Healthcare completed the initial phase of human factors training at St. Joseph Health System in Tawas City, Michigan.
The remaining two pilot sites, scheduled to begin in 2006, include Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, and the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.
Source: Safer Healthcare
First Integrated Solution for Communications and Documentation in Radiology
Two healthcare technology companies, Vocada and Commissure, have linked up to offer the first integrated solution for medical communications and documentation, the companies announced today.
Commissure provides a state-of-the art software platform that enables radiology departments to boost their productivity. Vocada's VoiceLinkÅ critical test results management solution is the only hospital enterprise solution for communicating critical test results from diagnostic departments to the entire ordering physician community. Using a patented system, VoiceLink automates the distribution of critical test result communications in a real-time, assured, and trackable solution.
By integrating these two solutions, radiology departments for the first time will be able to fully automate the entire clinical workflow for ordering, documenting, communicating and reporting radiological examinations, thereby setting new benchmarks for physician productivity and patient safety.
Commissure's RadWhereTM Suite provides a host of services for radiologists by improving the means by which reports are created, decisions are made and communications completed. Its real-time speech-reporting component uses patented natural language understanding algorithms to speed the reporting process and ultimately reduce how much the radiologist must say to complete a report.
Vocada recently introduced a major upgrade to VoiceLink, Version 2.0, which provides a complete critical test results management (CTRM) system. The patented VoiceLink system is an easy-to-use, hosted solution that enables a reporting clinician, such as a radiologist or clinical lab technologist, to create and send real-time reports of a critical patient finding to an ordering clinician. The ordering clinician can easily retrieve critical reports by phone or online.
VoiceLink ensures that every critical rest result is retrieved in a timely manner by the ordering physician. VoiceLink 2.0 supports a robust set of escalation rules that automatically forward critical test results to backup contacts and to other critical destinations within the hospital. The reporting clinician can monitor the process and status of his or her reports via the Internet. The entire process, including the original voice message of the critical test result, is archived and remains searchable for 10 or more years.
Vocada offers VoiceLink as a hosted, on-demand solution. It requires no customer investment in hardware or software. It can be accessed from any telephone and/or Internet-connected web browser.
RadWhereTM Suite is also capable of analyzing radiology reports and coding them with the proper ICD9 codes, eliminating the need for manual coding. RadWhere's enterprise teleradiology component solves the problems associated with servicing multiple sites and using multiple applications by intelligently connecting to all sites and providing a single workstation in which to access studies.
Source: Commisure
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