The United States government passed the 21st Century Cures Act in December 2016 that paved the way for a more streamlined device and drug approval process. The objective of this act was to bring new treatments to the market faster. While the debate in mainstream media focused on the merits of approving drugs based on weaker evidence and bypassing randomized, controlled trials, there were other provisions in the law that were truly remarkable.
As communities across the country face their own socioeconomic and health challenges, it is not uncommon for hospital emergency departments (ED) to be overcrowded and overutilized, particularly by under- or un-insured patients with non-emergent care needs. There are many reasons for this ED overuse and misuse, but a lot of times, it is simply due to patients’ lack of awareness of the safety-net and free clinics available to them in the area.
Measuring provider performance is complex. The analytics required to produce valid and reliable metrics is challenging. Using those metrics to make a tangible impact on outcomes is even harder.
Beginning in 2002 and ending a scant four years later, the animated series “The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius” followed the exploits of Jimmy and his none-too-bright buddy Sheen. And while the animators and writers may not have realized it at the time, they had the prescience to predict Amazon’s ascent to healthcare prominence, or dominance, depending on how you look at it.
With the growing number of “check lists” and mounting pressures to improve quality, safety, efficiency and performance, it is easy for healthcare providers to lose sight of an essential part of medicine – compassion.
A recently released article in the Journal of Pediatric Quality and Safety shows the independent research results of an observational study on how to reduce the time nurses and physicians spend on communication tasks that take them away from patient care in a critical care environment.
It was a Monday night, the busiest time in the ED. The ED charge nurse received an alert on her Vocera smartphone app. The alert was from Qventus, which predicts operational bottlenecks and recommends course corrections. The alert was telling the charge nurse that the ED was going to have a surge of patients in two hours. Qventus predicted this with machine learning based on the current census in the ED, historical admit and discharge times, the practice patterns of the clinicians currently working in the ED, and the current queue and expected turnaround times for diagnostic tests.
A physician needed to perform emergency surgery at a hospital that was in the same large integrated delivery network she worked in, but not her home hospital. As she set out to prep for the case, she needed to contact the care team, including the on-call ER doctor, surgery team, and the person in charge of room scheduling. She needed to find and obtain supplies.
Vocera empowers care teams through intelligent, real-time communication. We enable communication and coordination across the patient’s Healthcare experience. Vocera helps care team members reach the right person at the right time, on the right device, with the right information, in the right place, anywhere.
Quite frankly, we’re even impressed with the research findings. But that’s the type of company AMTELCO is, and that’s the type of company the 1Call Division is. We specialize in offering enterprise-wide communication solutions for healthcare organizations. 1Call has been, and will continue to be the leader in developing, implementing, and maintaining features and technology designed to streamline communications and contain costs throughout your organization.
Health IT Outcomes is the premier information resource for today’s most pressing Health IT topics. Our mission is to provide healthcare providers with expert guidance on technology system selection, integration, project management, and change management.
Health IT Outcomes covers all technology solutions that impact the productivity, efficiency, patient care, and cash flow of a healthcare facility — from the latest electronic health record software (EHR), healthcare information exchange (HIE), healthcare information management Software (HIM), healthcare document management, healthcare business intelligence software, healthcare revenue cycle management software, point of care (POC) EMR (electronic medical record) and HIM (health information management) software to point-of-care solutions and medical imaging systems. The site features a comprehensive buyer's guide, daily health IT news updates on the latest technologies, contributed articles from leading healthcare industry analysts and vendors, and original success stories that highlight how leading healthcare facilities are implementing technology solutions with maximum return.
The long-anticipated Report on Improving Cybersecurity in the Healthcare Industry has been released by the HHS Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Task Force, and with it comes clear, prescriptive recommendations on protecting your organization from the growing risk of cyber-attacks.
To protect PHI, healthcare organizations often build a system of usernames and complex passwords. But why are we still relying on usernames and passwords when solutions such as single sign-on (SSO) have a measurable benefit of giving time back to clinicians, which is everything in healthcare. That time saved –amounting to hours per week – can now be spent with patients, increasing both patient and clinician satisfaction.
UW Medicine’s Valley Medical Center dramatically improved patient outcomes after moving to a smartphone-based platform for clinical communication and alarm and alert notification.
