National Coordinator Mostashari Announces Resignation
Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, announced on August 8 that he will step down from his position as national coordinator for health information technology in the fall. Mostashari first joined the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) as deputy for programs and policy in 2009 and succeeded David Blumenthal, MD, as national coordinator in April 2011. Although the previous national coordinators have also served approximately two years in the position, Mostashari’s announcement caught the health IT community by surprise and prompted many accolades for his national leadership for health IT and its role in patient safety and quality improvement.
Massachusetts General Hospital’s Addition to Patient Safety Platform Guides Performance of Safe Surgery Checklist
LiveData, Inc., leader in real-time integration and display technology, has announced that Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has expanded its deployment of LiveData OR-Dashboard™, adding the revolutionary Active Time Out® (ATO) patient safety technology to automate their Safe Surgery Checklists.
CRG Medical Releases KBCore Purple Button Application on MioCARE Android Tablet for Healthcare
CRG Medical, Inc., developers of web-based healthcare applications, has released its KBCore™ Common Formats “Purple Button” Patient Safety interoperability application on the MioCARE A105 Android Tablet for Healthcare.
Humanizing Patient Care and Improving Satisfaction with Sacred Moments
As more research points to patient and family engagement as the cornerstone of better care and outcomes, hospitals are returning to good old fashioned medicine to create healing environments for caregivers, patients, and families.
Observation in the ER Can Reduce CT Scans in Kids
The longer a child with minor blunt head trauma is observed in the emergency department, the less likely the child is to require computed tomography (CT) scan, according to the results of a study published recently in Annals of Emergency Medicine.
3-D Simulation Technology Helps Surgical Residents Train More Effectively
A novel interactive 3-dimensional (3-D) simulation platform offers surgical residents a unique opportunity to hone their diagnostic and patient management skills, and then have those skills accurately evaluated according to a new study appearing in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The findings may help establish a new tool for assessing and training surgical residents.
Social Media, Tried and True
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become part of everyday life for many of us. In the buzz around these and other social media sites that offer real-time news and discussion, we shouldn’t lose sight of a useful tool that’s been around for nearly 30 years. Electronic mailing lists—often referred to by the proprietary-to-generic name, Listserv™—enable communities of people with shared interests to discuss topics with a minimum of fuss, bother, and technical skills.
PCORI-NIH Partnership on Fall-Related Injury Prevention Yields Request for Applications
As the next step in a partnership with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, has issued a Request for Applications (RFA) for a large-scale, multi-pronged clinical trial on prevention of fall-related injuries in non-institutionalized older adults. PCORI will commit up to $30 million to fund the trial selected through the application and peer-review process that NIA will administer.
Report: Real Risk of Errors in Patient Tissue Biopsy Processing
Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (Ventana), a member of the Roche Group, announced a groundbreaking study in the Journal of Histotechnology that indicates there is a real risk that errors can be made in the processing of patient biopsy tissue in anatomic pathology labs around the world. The Journal reports on the startling outcome of the Stainer Bath Cross Contamination Challenge (SBCCC), developed by Ventana Medical Systems, Inc., that involved 70 pathology labs from six countries across three continents.
The Hidden Surcharge Americans Pay for Hospital Errors
During a time of flux for U.S. healthcare, employers and purchasers are increasingly concerned about how much value they receive for their enormous investment in healthcare. In a recent presentation at the World Health Congress Innovative Drivers of Value Based Purchasing Seminar, Leah Binder, president and CEO of the employer-driven nonprofit The Leapfrog Group (Leapfrog), unveiled a new tool that allows purchasers to calculate how much they spend annually on unnecessary costs due to medical errors that occur within general acute care hospitals.