News
Swedish Medical Center, with four hospitals and 40 clinics in and around Seattle, has gotten its arms around patient information by taking charge of its document management. Scanners are a critical piece of the strategy.
CHRISTUS Health, a Dallas-based healthcare system, has implemented five new clinical decision support systems designed to improve care.
When officials at Grant Medical Center, part of the OhioHealth system, looked to improve the hospital’s quality indicators, they knew information technology could help. But unlike many healthcare organizations, they aimed the IT initiative at patients, not clinicians.
The Kettering Health Network, a six-hospital system based in Dayton, Ohio, has committed more than $50 million to implement an electronic health record system, abandoning its best-of-breed strategy for a fully integrated, enterprise-wide system.
How can hospitals meet regulatory and emergency service requirements for wireless, and satisfy staff and patient demands for commercial services at the same time?
A recent story by Patty Enrado (http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/community-colleges-should-be-tapped...) discussed the role that community colleges might play in meeting these workforce needs. The story relied mainly on the opinion of one senior vice president of a medical insurance company and a director of a community college association. Had this story interviewed a wider array of individuals who work in health IT, different conclusions may have been reached.
The "meaningful use" issue has been attracting a lot of attention in healthcare reform efforts lately. In very broad strokes, the debate stems from a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that allocates funding for physicians who are deemed to be meaningful users of electronic health records by 2011.
It was when Wendy Wolf, MD, talked about the fisherman brought into the emergency room after suffering a stroke on Casco Bay, or the skier unconscious after an accident on the slopes of Sugarloaf, or the woman in the doctor’s office who can’t remember when she last had a mammogram, that brought home just how essential the exchange of information among hospitals and physicians can be.
The National Cyber Security Alliance has added Google to its board of directors. The announcement comes as Google’s health division has increased activity this summer to protect patient rights.
A five-year ongoing study involving 10 large physician practices across the country has so far shown improved quality of care for chronic disease patients from the use of health information technology.