AHRQ Offers Free Quality Indicators (TM) Toolkit

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers a free toolkit to help hospitals understand and make effective use of the agency’s Quality Indicators (QIs) and Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs). In addition to its focus on these indicators, the toolkit is a general guide to using improvement methods.

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New Clinical Tool Helps Detect Early Warning Signs of Respiratory Complications

Covidien, a leading global provider of healthcare products and recognized innovator in patient monitoring and respiratory care devices, announced on March 20 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) clearance to the Company to market the Covidien Nellcor Respiration Rate Version 1.0 software and the Adult Respiratory Sensor.

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NCQA Honors Health Quality Leaders

Nationally-known surgeon, writer and public health researcher Atul Gawande, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Helen Darling, President and CEO of the National Business Group on Health; Patricia Gabow, MD, CEO of Denver Health and Hospital Authority; and Paul Grundy, MD, Global Director of Health Care Transformation at IBM, were honored by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) with Health Quality Awards in Washington, D.C., on March 27.

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National Quality Forum Endorses Two American College of Surgeons NSQIP Measures

Chicago—Two outcomes-based measures from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) were recently endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF). The two measures, surgical site infection (SSI) and urinary tract infection (UTI), were developed by ACS in partnership with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as possible national outcomes measures that could be adopted by the governmental body as early as 2015.

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Medical Image Exchange Enables Faster Diagnosis, Improved Outcomes and More

eHealth Global Technologies, Inc. (eHGT) and OptumInsight will deploy an innovative medical image exchange service for HEALTHeLINK, a Regional Health Information Organization serving eight counties of western New York, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls. This partnership will enable faster diagnosis and treatment, improved outcomes, reduced radiation exposure and health care cost reductions.

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Johns Hopkins Collaborates with Lockheed Martin to Build Next-Generation ICU

The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality of Johns Hopkins Medicine is collaborating with the Lockheed Martin Corporation to create a safer and more efficient hospital intensive care unit (ICU) model. The two organizations will work to streamline complex and fragmented clinical systems and processes to reduce medical errors and improve the quality of care for critically ill patients.

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Provider-Friendly Terminology Speaks the Language of Quality and Safety

Medical Terminology Management

Provider-Friendly Terminology Speaks the Language of Quality and Safety

As a practicing physician, my peers often ask me what I do in the technology arena. When I reply, “standardization or medical terminology management,” I’ve usually lost them. And at its core, the goal of standardization really is not to complicate matters for physicians and other clinicians. Provider-friendly terminology (PFT) is an example of the kind of standardization our industry needs.

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