In the pursuit of population health and accountable care success, providers are increasingly looking for tools that extend out into non-clinical or traditional healthcare settings to provide a complete picture of one’s health. Because individuals are heavily influenced by socioeconomic and behavioral forces, stakeholders are recognizing the significance of social determinates of health (SDOH) data in achieving value-driven, community-based outcomes.
Can a software project be alive? This is an interesting idea, as a software project has no body, no apparent vital signs to measure, and has no other tangible qualities one would attribute to “life." A project is born, it grows, it consumes resources, and has a finite end usually marked by retiring support or through abrupt termination. Inorganic, incorporeal, but it is indeed living, and it requires proper and routine check-ups to keep the project headed toward success. As a doctor performs a health check on patients, so to must project leaders check-up on their living projects.
For most people, it’s difficult to remember when automated teller machines (ATMs) did not exist. Prior to the introduction of ATMs, every banking task required filling out a short form, waiting in line to interact with a teller and maybe even waiting for that teller to speak with a manager to sign off on your transaction. Of course, all of this assumed that you could even get to the bank in between the tight business hours that it kept.
The age of consumerism has arrived, and patients are demanding a more active role in decision making as it pertains to the design and delivery of their care. Transparency, convenience and access are increasingly paramount, and technology is fast becoming a critical enabler of the value today’s consumers desire in their healthcare.
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.
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.
