Quality and Safety

In this video, Karen Farrell, Director of Computer-Assisted Physician Documentation (CAPD) at Nuance Healthcare, gives us a closer look at two Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) products announced at HIMSS12.

In their Views from the Top session, "Mercy Rising in Joplin: How Advanced Planning and Resolve Are Helping Us Rebuild," Lynn Britton, president and CEO, and William Showalter, vice president and CIO, both of Mercy Health, shared their experiences of recovering essential information and services, reestablishing information and workflow and rebuild.

You want irony? Try this: the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that we women are the ones who make the health care choices for the kids in 8 out of 10 families. Yet women are far and away the minority gender in the world of health IT leaders. While this is by no means the definitive list, I’ve done some research on the women who ARE making their mark in HIT.

Premier healthcare alliance has partnered with Carmel, Ind.-based Clinical Architecture in an effort to normalize disparate healthcare data and help care providers better understand and use health information.

Atul Gawande, MD, a surgeon, public health researcher and a writer for The New Yorker, advocates a mindset switch from docs as cowboys to docs as pit crews. Gawande also urges the smart use of data and a well-designed checklist for better and safer care.

The GOP primary candidates head to Nevada on Saturday, a state with poor healthcare and few healthcare resources -- also one that has plunged in and begun implementing what it can of the Affordable Care Act, even though many in the state don't agree with the politics of it.

With Minnesota's GOP caucus set for Feb. 7, we spoke to the North Star State's health IT honcho about public-private partnerships, electronic health records, health information exchange, telehealth and more. Often billed as the healthiest state in the U.S., Minnesota has long been a healthcare IT leader.

The Premier healthcare alliance has joined with Verisk Health, which develops risk assessment and decision analytics technology, to offer data to hospitals and health systems meant to help better measure the health of their communities and develop new care models.

A think tank with a healthcare task force chaired by former Senators Tom Daschle, a Democrat, and Bill Frist, MD, a Republican, is advocating for improved and better-used health information technology. Among the group's recommendations is "robust" data exchange.

Former Microsoft Health Solutions Group executive Peter Neupert will join Health Evolution Partners, a venture capital firm launched by former National Coordinator for Health IT David Brailer, MD, as an operating partner.