Quality and Safety
If there's one thing everyone in healthcare can probably agree on right now, it's that there is an awful lot of data being generated each and every day. What to do with that data, however, is another question.
It's often said that our society is one steeped in impatience. We want fast Internet, quick news, overnight deliveries. This culture of instant gratification even pervades healthcare, as can be seen in the outcomes of CMS' Pioneer ACO model, which initially boasted 32 member organizations but recently saw nine jump ship -- with two groups washing their hands of the project altogether.
Offering previously unimagined horsepower and speed, quantum computers could soon be making big waves in healthcare -- with "tremendous potential" to unlock advances in DNA sequencing, personalized medicine, machine learning, artificial intelligence and beyond.
Providers are increasingly using electronic health records, both to manage their patients' care and to provide more information to those patients, according to new data published Wednesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
"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.
Eighty-three IT teams were in the running to be named a top hospital in the Healthcare IT News 2013 "Where to Work: BEST Hospital IT Departments" program.
Many hospitals and health systems are increasingly frustrated with the inaccurate contact information that turns up in Google searches for their facilities. But they're even more annoyed with the unwieldy and often ineffective process required to correct it.
Developing an effective framework for driving healthcare quality improvements proves a multifaceted, complex endeavor, and although EHR systems can play a positive role in the task, much of the technology still misses the mark. This was just one of several concerns put before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance June 26.
Citing insufficient training, system shortfalls and the hospital's failure to involve direct-care nurses in the implementation process, RNs at the 266-bed Affinity Medical Center in northern Ohio have asked hospital officials to delay the rollout of its new Cerner electronic medical records system.
Hill Physicians Medical Group CEO Darryl Cardoza credits the group's successful ACO arrangements, improved efficiencies and the health information technology that supports it all for not only improving patient care, but also lowering costs. And, he's bullish on alignment.