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As part of our latest series on Healthcare-Exchange — provider snapshots — Kerry Tokla, senior information systems analyst at Cape Cod Healthcare, discusses how she and the Surgical Services team were recognized for leveraging technology to improve patient satisfaction while simultaneously managing costs within the organization.
Ask any hospital in the U.S. (or abroad for that matter), and they’ll tell you that the operating room (OR) and surrounding areas are major areas of concern when it comes to managing quality, costs and resources.
But there can be a disconnect between clinical and financial teams, making it difficult to align these initiatives. For clinical teams, the bottom line is taking unparalleled care of patients, but financial teams need help with cost control and that requires added visibility. The ORs of Cape Cod Healthcare are no different.
This week’s guest post comes from Martin Brown, M.D., FACEP, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Inova Alexandria Hospital in Alexandria, Va.. A key player in MEDS-ED Link, a grant funded project recently instituted by the Northern Virginia Regional Health Information Organization (NoVaRHIO), Dr. Brown discusses the impact of health information technology on patients in his facility.
We’re all aware that the evolution of healthcare technology is ultimately driven by a desire and need to improve patient care and operational efficiencies. However, many hospitals and clinicians today feel like they’re swimming in a sea of regulations, deadlines, implementations and go-lives. The plus side is that more and more frequently, we’re able to derive some improvements, motivation and gratification from the instances where access and sharing of clinical data across a healthcare community clearly makes an immediate difference in a patient’s treatment.
This week’s post comes from John Nackel, Ph.D., Chief 
Executive Officer at OptumInsight Consulting and Executive Vice President, OptumInsight (previously known as Ingenix). With more than 30 years of experience advising health care organizations, entrepreneurs and emerging businesses, John discusses his vision for Accountable Care Organizations.
The proposed CMS regulations on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) took the first step in promoting discussions about lowering costs, but how to align these costs between each healthcare stakeholder is still an issue and obstacle, leaving most of us to wonder — how will this all actually work? Confusion around how to develop the legal and financial framework that is an ACO, coupled with the complexity of aligning each constituency and enabling the model to continue to work effectively long-term — which we define as a Sustainable Health Community — may be driven by the provider. For some, this new model will mean huge opportunity and for others, significant risk.
This week’s guest post comes from Justin Chang, M.D., chief of emergency services, Kaiser Permanente, Colorado, and medical director, Exempla St. Joseph Hospital Emergency Department. A proponent of collaboration and enhanced coordination of care, Dr. Chang makes the case for a new model of healthcare delivery as defined March 31 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in its proposed ruling on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).
I think we can all agree — physician, payer, provider, patient, etc. — that the ultimate goal of regulations and reform should be to improve the delivery of healthcare, lowering costs and ultimately, making patients healthier and more satisfied. Coupled with driving toward the results defined by CMS, this requires some fairly significant changes in how healthcare providers operate — changes which may rightfully make some providers uneasy. But what many of us may not realize is that hospitals, physicians and payers across the country are already becoming advocates for the types of changes ACOs will require, supporting a shift away from the fee-for-service and silo-type models, even before the regulations go into effect.
This week, Dr. Shari Medina – Senior Director of Clinical Informatics at Picis, Inc. – discusses the evolving role of physicians within Sustainable Health Communities.
It’s no secret that healthcare’s inevitable move toward sustainable health communities (SHC) has many physicians feeling a bit…nervous. Admittedly, most physicians are creatures of habit who fiercely defend their individual approach to patient care, focus on cures not cost, and dread the concept of “cookbook medicine.” And under the SHC model, physicians are going to, without a doubt, be expected to move out of their comfort zones. But while SHCs will put new pressures on physicians to observe and adhere to evidence-based best practices, they will also allow physicians to preserve and deeply embrace the “art of medicine,” as well as enhance physicians’ skills and help improve outcomes by enabling them to spend more quality time with patients.
This week, Bill Miller – OptumInsight EVP responsible for provider strategy and solutions – explains why Sustainable Health Communities are both possible and probable in the years ahead as guest blogger for Healthcare-Exchange.
The buzzword du jour in healthcare is “Accountable Care Organizations”, or ACOs. The cynics among us might ask “Weren’t we calling these ‘medical homes’ just a few short months ago?” Those with long memories in addition to that dose of cynicism hark back twenty years and say these are just capitated HMOs.
The term is hardly what’s most important as the healthcare system evolves in response to healthcare reform, ARRA meaningful use, spending cuts, increasing regulation and a myriad of other influences, many of which are beyond the control of the hospital community. What matters is the outcome, the building and operation of what we at Ingenix refer to as Sustainable Health Communities.
This week we’re excited to introduce Sharon Giarrizzo-Wilson MS RN, CNOR, Informatics Nurse Specialist with the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) as our guest blogger.
Not since Florence Nightingale has nursing been viewed as a key agent in changing the delivery of healthcare. The landmark report recently released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), in collaboration with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF), The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, urges strategic nursing opportunities to transform the healthcare in the United States. The report from this joint partnership made several recommendations based on the challenges the nursing workforce faces as contributors in national healthcare reform and public health access. The collective recommendations call for a stronger nursing voice in redesigning the healthcare system.
As a senior director at HIMSS supporting the Health Information Exchange initiatives and involved with a number of RHIO and HIE efforts across the country, even I learned something from last week’s panel discussion, HIE Reality Check: The Path to a Nationwide HIE, available for download here. Dr. Michael Westcott, Phil Reilly, Keith Hepp and Deb Bass tackled a number of key issues and challenges facing HIE implementation today – from driving clinician and community support to overcoming operational challenges as well as securing both funding and sustainability. The panelists discussed their experiences and perspectives of long and short term activities needed to drive nationwide HIE. Some of the key discussion points included:
- Avoiding turning paper islands into electric islands;
- Overcoming the reluctance of small physician practices;
- Maintaining HIE and RHIO funding beyond grants; and
- Effectively communicating the benefits of effective data exchange to patients.
Please feel free to listen in and share your own experiences and feedback below!
– Pam Matthews, RN, MBA, CPHIMS, FHIMSS
Pam Matthews, RN, MBA, CPHIMS, FHIMSS
Pam Matthews, RN, MBA, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, serves as the Senior Director of Regional Affairs at HIMSS, a cause-based, not-for-profit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare. We are pleased to introduce her as this week’s guest blogger on Healthcare-Exchange.
We can all agree that great strides are taking place today to enable Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), as evidenced by the great work being done across the country at both the state and regional levels. For example, projects in Northern Virginia and Nebraska have taken off and are already providing real value to all participating constituencies.
Karyn Buxman, RN, MSN, CSP, CPAE
We’re thrilled to welcome former ED, ICU and OR nurse and internationally recognized expert in applied and therapeutic humor Karyn Buxman, RN, MSN, CSP, CPAE as a Healthcare-Exchange.com guest blogger this week. If this gives you a laugh, you can hear more from Karyn at The Journal of Nursing Jocularity!
Last week comedian Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s hugely popular show, The Colbert Report, testified, in character, before Congress. Facing the House Judiciary Committee, Colbert shared his ‘vast experience’ about the plight of migrant farm workers. In the process, he shared three lessons about communication that are vital for any of us who are in healthcare to learn and incorporate in our daily practice.
