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In this three-part series on Healthcare-Exchange, we’ll explore some of the issues around patient consent for HIEs and propose some tips to help organizations and providers collaborate to promote patient participation.
As healthcare organizations continue to implement HIEs, task forces are challenged with determining how to best attain the keystone of the operation: patient consent. For an HIE to be successful, patient data is critical, but it’s not as simple as just collecting it. Here are some things that healthcare organizations need to keep in mind in order to populate a successful HIE with the right data, while simultaneously maintaining patient privacy and ensuring patients’ comfort:
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 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.
I commented several months ago about how the hurried healthcare reform bill became so imperfect that there was no way it would not add to already escalating costs. But in accordance with the rule of unintended consequences, all the debate around the bill, along with the fear that some of its most onerous provisions like large cuts in Medicare for hospitals, has spurned a tidal wave in thinking and planning about new models of care that will be more efficient. We now hear the words “accountable care organization,” or ACO, more often than you heard “web strategy” during the dot.com boom. ACO is a technical term originated by the Brookings think-tank and adopted by CMS to cover the rules around ACO eligibility and qualification. However, the term “Sustainable Health Communities” (SHC) is a more descriptive term with the obvious connotation that left to our present course, the current system is unsustainable, and the addition of “community” extends all the way into all the pre- and post-acute care entities.
As the discussion of Sustainable Health Communities continues, we welcome to Healthcare-Exchange Joel Hoffman, Senior Vice President with OptumInsight Consulting, who sheds light on the payer perspective.
Football season may be over for the year. But for payers, the idea that “as goes the quarterback so goes the team” has never resonated as loudly as it does now — and will in the future — in the new world of Sustainable Health Communities.
Historically, payers have had an important, yet somewhat fundamental role: to select and manage risk, to negotiate favorable provider contracts, ensure its network is comprehensive, design appropriate benefit plans, manage care and provide appropriate customer service. Now, as we enter the era of Sustainable Health Communities, payers take on a new and even more critical function as the enabler — the head coach of the team where the primary care physician (PCP) is the “quarterback” in the local health care delivery system.
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.
It’s not news to most that with increasing regulations, an aging population, rising healthcare costs and dwindling numbers of nurses and certain medical specialists, U.S. hospitals are finding themselves scrambling to do more with less. Most hospitals today are focused on trying to meet Meaningful Use requirements, to avoid penalties and secure financial incentives. But many are missing the bigger, longer term picture of this country’s financial situation: how half a trillion (or more) in Medicare cuts over the next 10 years will impact the industry.
I don’t know about you, but I was thrilled to hear about today’s launch of MEDS-ED Link, a project of the Northern Virginia Regional Health Information Organization (NoVaRHIO) in conjunction with Inova Health System and GE Healthcare.
As an insider in healthcare for more than 20 years, today is an exciting day for me. Picis, the company I co-founded with Liz Popovich and helped grow into an international software company with 700 employees, is being acquired by Ingenix, a leading HIT, consulting and services company with nearly 6,000 hospital clients around the world.
This is a classic “win-win-win” situation that will benefit us, Ingenix, and all our customers and prospects. With all that is going on in healthcare industry today, I can tell you from the heart that the timing was perfect for this transaction, and this is truly the best possible home for Picis in which to grow and prosper.
