Health & IT Quality: Seeing Is Not Believing
Health & IT Quality
Seeing Is Not Believing
Consider this scenario: An adventure traveler begins his trek to a remote village in the Andes. Upon arriving at the airport, he rents a car and begins his journey on winding roads to the village. After 90 minutes of driving, he encounters an intersection with a traffic light. Upon seeing the bottom of the light glowing brightly, he continues through the intersection.
ARQH: What Is Your Organization’s Patient Safety Culture?
ARQH
What Is Your Organization’s Patient Safety Culture?
Ask any frontline clinician or healthcare support staff if they can identify the components that make up a “culture of patient safety,” and you might get a vague answer in response. But ask those same health providers if they feel they can speak up to report patient safety concerns without fearing retribution, and you’re likely to get very specific responses.
Editor’s Notebook: New Resources for Patient Engagement
Editor’s Notebook
New Resources for Patient Engagement
It’s easy enough to say that patient engagement—the process of including patients as respected and equal partners by removing barriers to information and participation—is important.
RFID Showcase
RFID Showcase
Coming to the AID of Healthcare
Many companies focus on the realm of RFID (radio frequency identification) for healthcare, and there have been some significant challenges both on the R&D side and the practitioner’s implementation side.
Safety Culture Oregon Hospitals Use Survey Results to Drive Change
Safety Culture
Oregon Hospitals Use Survey Results to Drive Change
Medical error rates at hospitals are under scrutiny as never before, both from within and outside the healthcare profession. In response, many hospitals have begun transforming their internal cultures to align medical practice more closely with safety goals.
Event Reporting: How Rhode Island Is Leading a Revolution in Patient Safety
Event Reporting
How Rhode Island Is Leading a Revolution in Patient Safety
This is the first in a series of articles about the statewide implementation of a standardized web-based event-reporting platform to facilitate the reduction of medical errors.
Open Source Health IT in the Psychiatric Care Environment
Open Source Health IT in the Psychiatric Care Environment
Silver Hill Hospital of New Canaan, Connecticut, recently joined a select group of psychiatric hospitals in the United States that have implemented an electronic health record (EHR) system. Founded in 1931, Silver Hill Hospital is a 129-bed not-for-profit psychiatric hospital that provides inpatient and residential transitional living programs for adolescents and adults.
Critical Values Reporting: Making Day-to-Day Performance Count
Critical Values Reporting: Making Day-to-Day Performance Count
In 2006, the Shepherd Center, a 132-bed spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, was having trouble meeting The Joint Commission’s (TJC) requirements for reporting critical values: measuring, assessing, and, if appropriate, taking action to improve the timeliness of reporting, as well as the timeliness of receipt by the responsible licensed caregiver of critical tests, results, and values.
Interoperability and Actionable Intelligence: Future Requirements, Current Possibilities
Interoperability and Actionable Intelligence: Future Requirements, Current Possibilities
Government requirements for “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs) have focused national attention on the need to integrate and computerize a patient’s medical records to improve performance and support patient care processes.
Standards for Medical Device Interoperability and Integration
Standards for Medical Device Interoperability and Integration
At the point-of-care, medical devices provide clinicians with real-time status of the patient’s condition, including the patient’s vital signs. This data is vital for treatment and can be a critical aspect of patient safety since it provides near real-time surveillance of patient status to locations beyond the patient’s bedside.