Tag: Quality and Safety

Northwest Medical Specialties is a physician-owned, community oncology practice with five sites in the Tacoma, Washington, area. NWMS is dedicated to providing compassionate, high-quality cancer care, and takes part in several cancer care quality initiatives and value-based care programs, such as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s Oncology Care Model, American Society of Clinical

Machine learning-based clinical decision support can be an effective way to review the accuracy of medical prescription orders, a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association shows. According to the Paris-based research team, a CDS tool trained on data from 10,716 patients was more accurate than existing techniques at

Healthcare industry groups have been chewing on the challenge of accurate patient matching for years, with the prospect of patient misidentification presenting questions around safety and security even as the importance of data sharing becomes more apparent.   And the COVID-19 crisis, said industry group representatives at a working session convened by the Office of

On Day 1 of the HIMSS APAC Malaysia Digital Health Summit, Dr Shannon Nott, Director of Medical Services, Western New South Wales (NSW) Local Health District and Shehaan Fernando, Regional Director Population Health Management and Connected Care Informatics, ASEAN Pacific, Philips, together with HIMSS Chief Clinical Officer, Dr Charles Alessi gathered virtually at the session

IBM this week launched Rapid Supplier Connect, a blockchain-based network it says can help healthcare organizations, whether hospitals or government agencies, address equipment shortages during the pandemic by helping them find alternative suppliers. WHY IT MATTERS Northwell Health, the largest healthcare provider in the state hardest hit by COVID-19, and the Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

A series of randomized quality improvement projects carried out at New York University’s Langone Health medical center has helped the organization better assess the effectiveness of patient-focused programs. The efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of routine processes of hospital staff ranged from inpatient units and outpatient offices to the emergency department, as well as adjustments

Georgia Hospital Health Services, a subsidiary of the Georgia Hospital Association, is working with Allscripts subsidiary CarePort Health to improve transitions of care. WHY IT MATTERS As they work to improve care coordination and boost quality outcomes for post-acute care management, hospitals across Georgia will have access to a range of technologies from CarePort to

A study on voice assistant comprehension reveals platforms like Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa need to improve the accuracy of their technology for healthcare applications. WHY IT MATTERS The research, conducted by Klick Health and published in Nature Digital Medicine, found Google’s comprehension of the most commonly dispensed medication names in the U.S.

KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), the largest hospital specialising in healthcare for women and children in Singapore, has partnered with French multinational electric utility company ENGIE and end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) solutions company UnaBiz on a smart facilities management project with digitisation of temperature and humidity monitoring using low-power sensors. WHAT’S THE IMPACT

Health systems are digitizing many of their processes to improve operations and become more consumer-friendly, but health leaders sometimes miss a key piece of the puzzle: the call center. THE PROBLEM The manual process for fielding scheduling calls can be a nightmare: Calls can take up to 20 minutes, and agents comb through binders/spreadsheets of

About five years ago, PeaceHealth, a 16,000-caregiver healthcare provider in the Pacific Northwest with 10 hospitals and 250 ambulatory clinics, began a focused effort to meet the compliance standards of the HIPAA role-based access requirements. THE PROBLEM At the same time, the provider organization invested $300 million in converting the electronic health records of its

Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, part of Trinity Health, which is headquartered in Livonia, Michigan, was working on improving its patient throughput and identified an opportunity to implement real-time analytics to help accomplish this goal. THE PROBLEM The health system operates in a value-based care market. Its hospital, like many hospitals across the country, works

HIMSS has honored California Correctional Health Care Services with its 2018 Davies Community Award of Excellence, recognizing the provider organization’s efforts in using health IT to reduce hospitalizations for high-risk patients. Ten years ago, California Correctional Health Care Services was buried in paper. Tens of thousands of inches of healthcare records were spread out across

A new report from KLAS surveyed more than 100 various-sized providers for insights about how they're relying on technology to help them manage the opioid crisis in their communities. Electronic health records are a basic but critical tool in the fight, and expectations on vendors are high, the study shows. WHY IT MATTERS The opioid

It's an inconvenient truth that much of healthcare still runs on legacy software. Whether it's operating systems or medical devices, the security implications of depending on vulnerable and unsupported technologies are serious, putting HIPAA compliance and patient safety at risk. But even recent software has its flaws, of course, and new zero day vulnerabilities are

Quality and safety may very well be the highest goals in healthcare. Healthcare provider organizations clearly aim to deliver the highest quality of care in the safest manners and settings possible. Technology has a part to play when it comes to quality and safety. And there are changes afoot in quality and safety technology that

The FDA's software precertification program aims to take a new approach to regulation for a health technology space that's evolving at dizzying speed. It's meant to offer a voluntary pathway that can keep tabs on the safety and efficacy of new software and devices without stifling innovation or hindering patient access. For vendors that have

Vecna Technologies, a developer of patient self-service systems, has integrated its onsite patient check-in platform with Imprivata's PatientSecure identification technology. Through the partnership, hospitals and ambulatory practices will be able to use Imprivata's biometric palm vein scanning technology to securely ID patients who are checking in using Vecna's platform. There is now a thriving market for

For all the hype and excited pronouncements about the impacts it can have driving healthcare efficiencies, artificial intelligence is still not deployed as widely (or wisely) as it could be. But many health systems are working in earnest to roll out AI-driven analytics projects – even if their particular payoff isn't quite yet in sight

The Food and Drug Administration released its plan to improve medical device safety, which includes a reorganization of its medical device center and a Congressional plan to launch a public-private partnership focused on cybersecurity. The five-point plan released Tuesday outlines a plan to consolidate offices within its device center, which oversees pre- and post-market activities.