Publicly reporting key process indicators may be clinically linked to improving hospital performance, lowering mortality and reducing length of stay, but alone they may provide too little information to be used as an indicator for healthcare quality, according to a study published in this month's Health Affairs.
Remote monitoring programs for patients diagnosed with heart failure (HF) can reduce HF hospital admissions, cardiovascular events and length of stay, according to a study presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s Heart Failure Congress 2010 in Berlin May 29-June 1.
Written by Kaitlyn Dmyterko
Denver—EMRs are the wave of the future and despite slow roll-out times and new technology learning curves, these electronic solutions cut healthcare costs and boost patient care, said Elizabeth A. Ching, RN, from the Cleveland Clinic, during a presentation May 13 at the 31st Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) scientific sessions.
GE Healthcare and CardioDx, a cardiovascular genomic diagnostics company, have entered into a strategic alliance to co-develop diagnostic technologies to improve the care and management of patients with cardiovascular disease.
Written by Kaitlyn Dmyterko
As baby boomers age and the incidence rates of chronic diseases grow, the impetus to implement remote monitoring services to save overhead costs and time will continue to grow.
Although health IT, such as computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and EHRs, has the potential to improve the quality of healthcare in the U.S., achieving substantive benefits from implementing health IT may be a lengthy process, according to a study in the April edition of Health Affairs.
Thomson Reuters has released its annual study identifying the top 100 U.S. hospitals based on their overall organizational performance, based on 10 specific benchmarks. Of note, the list does not include any facilities from New England, the Northwest region nor the state of New York.
Written by Kaitlyn Dmyterko
ATLANTA--Improvements in quality of care measurements do not decrease 30-day mortality rates, said Jersey Chen, MD, of the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific sessions Monday.
The use of at-home medical devices to connect doctors and patients via the internet can help patients and their physicians work more efficiently together to manage chronic conditions, according to research at Cleveland Clinic.
Written by Jeff Byers
Patient monitoring technology is evolving to deliver far more than digital vital signs. Today’s physiological monitoring systems provide immediacy, accuracy and ease of access with an added dimension of both intelligence—to predict, monitor and analyze patient events over time—and flexibility to monitor patients from other areas in the unit and even the patient’s home.
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While many U.S. physicians identify language or cultural barriers as obstacles to providing high-quality patient care, physicians' efforts to overcome communication barriers are modest and uneven, according to a report released by the Center for Studying Health System Change.
Written by Ken Terry
As hospitals start looking at how to break down the walls between acute and post-acute care, CMIOs would do well to consider the experience of Cleveland Clinic, a pioneer in building health IT bridges across the continuum of care.
The Joint Commission, in its fourth annual report, found continual improvement on 12 quality measures reflecting the best evidence-based treatments and practices leading to the best outcomes in American hospitals.
Anthem Blue Cross has partnered with Ideal Life to pilot the C.A.R.E. (Congestive Heart Failure Ambulatory Remote monitoring and Engagement) program to provide wireless body weight scales to in-home congestive heart failure patients for increased patient monitoring.
Bioheart has entered a distribution agreement with Restoration Medical, McRay Medical, Alamo Scientific and Morey Medical to initiate its home heart failure monitoring system, the BG 3370 Home Monitoring Service, to chronically ill patients throughout the U.S.
Current efforts to collect and publicly report data on discharge planning are unlikely to yield large reductions in unnecessary readmissions, according to study authors in the Dec. 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Kaiser Permanente has received 22 grants worth more than $54 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.
A report by the New York City-based Commonwealth Fund Commission has found there is a significant difference between the access, quality and cost of healthcare across state lines and that healthcare disparities among states continue to widen.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced the results from three value-based purchasing (VBP) demonstrations, one for large physician practices, one for small and solo physician practices and one for hospitals. The agency simultaneously commissioned the launch of three additional VBP demonstrations.
The performance gap between safety net and non-safety net hospitals continues to shrink as a result of hospital participation in value-based purchasing, according to an analysis of the Hospital Quality Demonstration Project, released last week by the Premier Healthcare Alliance.
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“We’re beginning a revolution the way information is collected, managed, used and purposed for patients in the U.S. healthcare system,” said David Blumenthal, MD, chair of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, in opening remarks at an audioconference training session on meaningful use and EHR certification last week.
In Part 1 of our closer look at the final rules for meaningful use and EHR certification standards, CMIO’s Jeff Byers spoke with David Blumenthal, MD, chair of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. In Part 2, CMIOs weigh in with mixed reviews.
The framework for meaningful use is “something that had to be done and has been started intelligently,” John P. Glaser, PhD, vice president and CIO of Partners HealthCare System told CMIO. However, the challenges of becoming meaningful users and optimizing health information exchange will require unprecedented levels of communication within organizations and among healthcare systems, he said.
The contractual obligations in the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on modifications to the HIPAA privacy, security and enforcement rules under the HITECH Act for business associates and downstream entities are game changers, according to Amy S. Leopard, JD, from Walter and Haverfield, during a webinar sponsored by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
Standardizing performance measures, with the help of health IT, will make it possible to collect the right data at the right time to support performance measurement, clinical decision support, clinical research and quality improvement, said Janet M. Corrigan, PhD, president and CEO of the National Quality Forum (NQF) during a webinar hosted by the forum on June 17.