Quality and Safety
An IT network failure at a Florida health system put the organization's $80 million Epic electronic medical record system down for the count this past week. The outage, officials reported, lasted nearly two days.
With help from a $5.3 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will explore ways to put IT and patient engagement to work eliminating preventable harm in the ICU.
Maine may become the first state in the country to offer residents access to their personal health records via a health information exchange. The Maine HealthInfoNet plan is part of a federally-funded innovation project experimenting with a range of medical home, analytics and engagement strategies.
The National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission have announced the 2013 recipients of the annual John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards.
A Washington-based network of pediatricians who are now using a mobile app to connect with their EHR, have discovered that a few minutes saved in each encounter can add up over time, and the ROI can mean a whole lot more than just money saved. Just ask the parents of a sick or newborn child what a few minutes mean to them.
The Office of the National Coordinator is looking for a new certification director at perhaps the most critical point in the evolution of the federal health IT incentive program. The new deputy would assume the post just as rulemaking and certification work starts for the third phase of the meaningful use program.
The two long-time staffers, both former members of the military, replace two other long-time agency leaders and are overseeing the most significant health coverage and regulatory expansions in the agency's history.
In one of the first large-scale empirical studies on the links between HIE participation and imaging in hospital emergency departments, researchers found redundant CT scans, X-rays and ultrasounds decreased fairly significantly -- with savings in the millions of dollars.
Karen DeSalvo, MD, appears to have the right background to understand the challenges facing the healthcare system. Beginning with her childhood experience as a public health clinic patient and including work as an internist managing a hospital's medical records committee, she has direct experience with the system at all levels.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released what it calls Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience guides: nine toolkits to help providers make safer use of electronic health records and other technology.