Jeff Rowe
"Location, location, location" is a phrase that's long been associated with real estate, but in recent years it's also played a role in attempts by healthcare professionals to track disease. Now, some are putting health IT to work in adding location information -- where patients have lived -- into their EHRs.
There's a commonly held perception that healthcare is a process in which doctors take care of patients. But increasingly healthcare stakeholders are figuring out that, at times, a more effective way to help patients get healthy is to show them how to take care of themselves.
Remember when doctors made house calls? It's probably safe not to expect the return of those days any time soon, but some healthcare stakeholders are saying the time has come for providers to take a more active role in their patients' healthcare.
If you were a healthcare provider and all you did was read press releases, you'd be tempted to think that transitioning to a new EHR involved little more than opening the package and plugging in the contents. Naturally, things are a little more complicated than that.
There are buzz phrases, and then there are buzz phrases. And if there's one phrase that has permeated the healthcare sector more thoroughly than all the others, it's probably "accountable care." But what exactly does it mean? Or, more to the point for healthcare providers, how do you know when you're actually providing it?
The ONC Town Hall at the mHealth Summit on Tuesday put consumers center stage with a discussion of how patients are getting plugged in to their own healthcare.
When it comes to health status, West Virginia is a national leader, but not in a positive way. The state leads the nation in a number of chronic diseases - including diabetes, strokes and cardiovascular disease - and factors such as limited activity, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control.
Michael Kirsch, MD, roundly condemned EMRs as a guest columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on Christmas Day. He said it doesn't save time or money, promote efficiency, or improve staff morale. He knows of no patients who prefer it, and believes only health IT vendors are benefiting from the federal push for health IT adoption.
A recent study by RAND Corp., published in the American Journal of Managed Care, reveals that improvements in quality of care varied among different types of disease.
Family physician and medical blogger Kenny Lin wrote of the error he almost made several years ago when he prescribed medication for one of his patients using his EMR system. He clicked the wrong choice, but caught his mistake before the patient left the office. Lin's assessment: "electronic systems only change the nature of the medical errors that are made."