Interested CIOs, consultants and analysts may contact the writers until Nov. 1.
Cover Story: Show Us the Evidence
Do you think CPOE implementation – a mountain of a task in itself – is the end of the clinical IT road? Think again. Pioneering hospital organizations around the country are now moving toward evidence-based care delivery and processes. Clinician leaders in those organizations, working closely with CIOs and their teams, are scanning the clinical literature, building order sets and care guidelines and protocols to improve patient care safety and quality. What they're seeing is the future, one being pushed already by purchasers, payers, and policymakers. If you've got a great story to tell, please let us know. [email protected]
Clinical
Anesthesia errors can not only be life threatening for the patient, but a high source of malpractice settlements for hospitals. As the use of IT in hospitals grows, more providers are beginning to bring it into the operating room with the use of anesthesiology systems. We’ll take a look at the current state of the market, and see how these systems interact with other departments like scheduling, lab, and the enterprise EMR. We’ll also see how they can drive efficiencies and help with clinical decision support at the point of care. [email protected]
Financial
As the ranks of the uninsured continues to grow, collecting payment for service is more of a challenge than ever — and providers need all the help they can get. Though kiosks are in use at many hospitals for registration, today more providers are also using them to collect co-payments, set up billing plans and provide financial counseling before the patient leaves. In addition to kiosks, some hospitals are arming their collections staff with handheld credit-card swipers, dispatching them to the ED for copayments in real time. We’ll look at the creative ways hospitals are using kiosks and handhelds to improve the revenue cycle and keep those dollars from walking out the door. [email protected]
Administrative
As EHR adoption increases and data is more frequently exchanged across health organizations, the need for an accurate system of patient identification (EMPI) is becoming more evident. One of the Joint Commission’s top goals for 2009 was to improve accuracy in this area and eliminate errors related to patient misidentification. The problem is particularly evident in large health systems, where patients often visit different facilities, resulting in multiple entries for the same person. This article will explore the challenges faced by administrative staffs in regard to patient identification, as well as the methods hospital leaders are employing to uniquely and securely authenticate patients. [email protected]
Wireless
In this story, Editor Kate Gamble will conduct a one-on-one interview with Jimmy Weeks, CIO at Greenwich Hospital, an organization that has achieved HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 recognition and is one of the top wireless hospitals in the country, despite its small size. Gamble will discuss the challenges involved in pushing wireless implementations forward in a tough economy, the importance of having the right infrastructure in place to support rollouts like CPOE, and how he incorporates social media into strategy. [email protected]
Imaging
In the complicated path forward on health information exchange, one early "win" has been in the number of HIEs that are already transmitting diagnostic images across their networks. The result? Improved care processes and efficiency for doctors and patients across communities and regions. In this story, HCI will look at how and why this aspect of HIE development is progressing. [email protected]
Policy
The Best of David Raths’ Policy Blog (Contact: [email protected])
