Electronic Physician Documentation

Not Just Another IT Project

By Joseph Catapano, MD, MMM, CHCQM

As hospitals throughout the country sprint towards Meaningful Use, computerized physician order entry (CPOE), electronic medication reconciliation, ICD-9-generated diagnosis tables, nursing documentation, and bedside barcoding seem to be riding a tsunami incentivized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Editor’s Notebook

Nurses and Social Media

By Susan Carr

Working on an article for this issue (pg. 32), I conducted a brief survey of 12 nurse executives, which included a question about social media. Their responses confirmed my sense that most healthcare professionals are interested but tentative in their use of social media.

Medical Home

Information, Communication, and Teamwork for Care Collaboration

By Thomas McCarrick, MD

Hospitals now face penalties if too many discharged patients are readmitted within 30 days. This Medicare stipulation in the Affordable Care Act comes in response to expert analysis that indicates lack of discharge planning and poor follow-up care can lead to unnecessary admissions and higher healthcare costs.

Health IT & Quality

We Know What to Do

By Barry P. Chaiken, MD, FHIMSS

Almost eight years ago Richard Hillestad and his colleagues from the Rand Corporation predicted that electronic medical record systems (EMRs) would generate cumulative efficiency and safety savings of $142 to $371 billion during a 15-year period, an average of $81 billion annually (Hillestad et al., 2005). These savings were based upon assumptions of a low-end 1.5% productivity improvement from information technology (experience of the retail industry) to a high-end 4% productivity improvement (half of telecom industry experience).

News

HENs Help Hospitals Spread What They Already Know

By Susan Carr

With this issue, Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH) reaches its fifth anniversary, which prompts me to take a moment and think about how much the world has changed and stayed the same in the past five years. When we published the first issue, in July 2004, the patient safety community was discussing how much progress—if any—had been made since the IOM published To Err Is Human five years earlier, and now we are assessing progress made over the past 10 years.