Quality and Safety
A Mayo Clinic team is launching a new company to provide clinical decision support tools for the ICU, operating room and emergency department. The startup is backed with $1.1 million in seed funding from Mayo Clinic and Silicon Valley investors The Social+Capital Partnership, and nonprofit Rock Health.
The sheer volume of uncoordinated measures are overwhelming clinicians and until they are narrowed down and made uniform across all sectors of healthcare, the task of improving care will remain elusive. So say former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt.
Hospitals in Premier's QUEST collaborative collectively saved 136,375 lives and about $11.65 billion over the past five and a half years. They did it, they said, by employing Premier alliance's proven methodology and integrated analytics.
HIMSS Analytics recognized 51 clinics of Northeast Georgia Physicians Group with the Stage 7 Ambulatory Award. NGPG becomes the sixth system in the country to receive the award.
Telemedicine, the exchange of medical information between sites via electronic communications, is being used not only by ICUs but also by other hospital departments, home health agencies and private doctors' offices. But skeptics suggest that small ICUs might be able to improve care with less expensive measures.
With an eye on reducing hospital readmissions and boosting patient care coordination, Partners HealthCare at Home, a division of Partner's HealthCare in Boston, is rolling out new remote monitoring technology.
AT&T has tapped noted heart surgeon, geneticist and author Eric Topol, MD, as its chief medical advisor. Topol is expected to impact the design, development and delivery of AT&T's healthcare IT solutions, executives say.
Blackford Middleton, MD, first came across the term "clinical decision support" in 1983. Today, Middleton continues his decades-long work on CDS and hoping the federal meaningful use program can help make clinical decision support systems more accessible, intelligent and interoperable.
A panel convened by the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation and Prescriptions for a Healthy America is urging health IT policymakers to sharpen their focus on medication adherence.
Hard numbers for return on investment in health IT aren't always measurable, at least in a direct way. Instead, healthcare organizations need to look at both "hard" and "soft" savings when considering a system's ROI.