News: Planning Continues for National Health IT Safety Center
RTI International has released the Health IT Safety Center Roadmap, which it produced for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The report (available at www.healthitsafety.org) lays out a plan for creating a sustainable center dedicated to improving the safety of healthcare through the use of information technology (IT) while also addressing safety problems introduced by the use of IT.
News: Funding Available for Research in Diagnosis
New funding opportunities from AHRQ are dedicated to diagnostic safety.
ABQAURP News: Physician Advisor as the ‘Great Communicator’
I was recently asked by a care manager to “please educate the docs” on the difference between inpatient and observation. How many times in the daily work routine of a physician advisor have we heard that request or something similar?
ABQAURP News
Healthy People 20201 includes “Create social and physical environments that promote good health for all” as one of the four overarching goals for the decade. The program’s agenda includes social determinants of health as a new topic area.
Improving Safety and Reducing Harm from Fluoroscopy
Fluoroscopy is a powerful tool that has been used over the past century in many medical disciplines. If asked, ”What is an X-ray?”, many patients would say it is like a photograph—a picture of a body taken at a moment in time. Following this analogy, if a conventional X-ray is similar to a photograph, fluoroscopy is like a video. Instead of capturing only a moment in time, fluoroscopy shows the movement of catheters, devices, and contrast within the body over an extended period of time as part of a procedure performed directly by a physician. Fluoroscopically-guided interventions (FGI) refers to specific uses of fluoroscopy where devices or instruments are inserted through the skin (i.e., percutaneously) and are guided using fluoroscopy to complete a medical procedure.
Predictive Analytics, Home Health Monitoring Combine for Better Care
CareSage is a new predictive analytics engine from Royal Philips that enables health systems to better monitor and care for elderly patients by combining actionable insights with wearable devices and monitoring.
Mount Sinai Launches System for Faster Referrals, Increased Quality of Care
Skylight Healthcare Systems Releases New Nurse Rounding Tool
Hospitals across the country use nurse and leadership rounding to improve the quality of care and overall patient experience. To support their efforts, Skylight® Healthcare Systems, developer of a comprehensive patient engagement platform, has released Skylight Interactive Rounding.
Dr. Gary Kaplan Named Chair of NPSF Lucian Leape Institute
The National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute has named Gary S. Kaplan, MD, FACP, FACMPE, FACPE, the next chairman of the Institute.
New Sentinel Event Alert Examines Safe Use of Health Information Technology
Safe use of health information technology (health IT) is the focus of a new Sentinel Event Alert recently released by The Joint Commission.