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.
The Case for Regulating EMRs
The Case for Regulating EMRs
Papers reporting serious adverse events (Nebeker, 2005; Yong, 2005) relating to the use of commercial healthcare IT (HIT) applications received significant publicity in 2005. Many of the reports at that time focused on the configuration of decision support systems used in computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems.
Clinical Analytics
Clinical Analytics
EMR Implementation Is an Opportunity, Not a Guarantee
As hospital IT leaders consider how to address meaningful use of electronic medical records (EMR) within their own organizations, they should see the next generation of EMRs as an opportunity to take arms against avoidable medical errors, improve the level of personalized medicine, and reduce hospital readmissions to boost quality scores.
Diagnostic Radiology
Diagnostic Radiology
Critical Communication: Improving Patient Safety
The written diagnostic imaging report is the key method of communication between radiologists and referring clinicians. However, the radiology report is valuable not only for its contents, but also for the timeliness of delivery given the important subject matter of radiologic results, including, in some cases, critical findings.