RE: Change HC/RansomHub, now that the data is for sale, what is the federal govt. or DOD doing to protect…
Morning Headlines 7/2/13
Halamka: IT Must Plan For Disparate EHRs
InformationWeek picks up a blog post by John Halamka, MD, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in which he suggests that the "rip and replace" approach to integrating large health systems will not be possible much longer as ICD-10 and Meaningful Use Stage 2 continue to consume capital and IT resources. He advocates a form of affiliation planning in which critical workflows are targeted and automated rather than integrating all care areas.
El Camino Hospital Cuts Readmissions 25% With Health IT
The 433-bed El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA reduces readmissions by 25 percent by identifying patients who are likely to be readmitted and taking aggressive action to correct the problems. One solution that shows promise is a tele-transfer planning program that requires clinicians working at long-term facilities to begin participating remotely in discharge planning meetings early in their patient’s stay at the hospital.
Digital health funding is up, but growth slows, says Rock Health
San Francisco-based health IT incubator Rock Health releases a report detailing venture capital investment activity in the health IT startup sector. The report concludes that investments are up 12 percent from last year, with nearly $900 million invested in startups thus far in 2013, but that the pace of growth has slowed as compared to last year.
Facebook grapples with rules for patients seeking organ donors
Facebook is working on implementing a communication platform that will help match patients seeking organ donors with those that may be in a position to respond. This is the second major announcement from Facebook on the subject. The company recently implemented a program that allows users to declare themselves organ donors on their Facebook profiles, an action that automatically launches an official donor registration website where users can register, then posts a message about being an organ donor on the users profile. That initiative has been credited with significantly increasing organ donor registration rates since its deployment.
Congrats to El Camino. Why was its readmission rate high to begin with? We have found neglect of the patients and hurried discharge processes as nurses and doctors are focussed on getting the clicks and grids filled in right, rather than assessing the patients’ needs.
It is not at all clear to me that IT is a solution for flawed evaluation, assessments and premature discharges.
A telephone and a voice works just fine, thank you.
We are all dumber for having read this. I don’t think anyone believes HIT is the complete solution for healthcare’s ills. To position it as the sole or prime evil is just intellectually lazy. Moreover, your constant carping isn’t the type of involved debate that will make anything better. You’re free to join a practice that avoids technology, eschews their incentives or insurance, and put your time and effort into what you blowhard about here everyday.