From:
http://www.forbes.comBy:
Dan Munro
Lately, there has been a renewed interest in harnessing creativity in business. Last year, in “Spark: How Creativity Works,” Julie Burstein and Kurt Andersen recounted interviews with various personalities who broke through barriers in unexpected ways, often by looking outside their immediate lives. This year, in his excellent book “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” Jonah Lehrer explains how creative companies purposefully create environments that connect teams from different corners of the organization in order to create more ideas and solutions. I believe these are insights that are directly relevant to innovation in healthcare, not just for individual organizations, but for innovation across the healthcare ecosystem.
My recent trips to TEDMED and the World Health Care Congress (WHCC), both in Washington, D.C., reminded me of these books – as some of the brightest minds in the industry joined together to discuss creative, unexpected solutions to the business of healthcare. Amidst some outstanding discussions on healthcare challenges, new practices, and questions to replicate lessons learned on a larger scale, there were also some people who were surprising to most, such as Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox, who was interviewed in a keynote at WHCC. Before her talk, I’m sure many attendees were asking themselves, what does Xerox have to contribute to healthcare?
But the truth is, when it comes to the health of our population and the state of healthcare in this country today, we need fresh ideas. Stakeholders agree that we not only need to look for solutions by working together (e.g., payers with providers), but that we need to connect ideas from different fields and learn from experiences in other industries. TEDMED, like TED, even makes a point to invite speakers with different backgrounds and even writers and artists to present their ideas and offer inspiration.
From that perspective, unexpected companies actually have a large role to play in healthcare. As several speakers at WHCC pointed out, the issue is not that we are lacking critical technology. Instead, we have a wealth of technologies developed in other, further advanced fields that can be applied to healthcare, if only we bring the technologies together with subject matter experts. For example, natural language processing (NLP) has a long history at Xerox, originally created for document analysis, translation, and management. Three years ago this technology became the core of a pilot to prevent infections in French hospitals, using FactSpotter text mining technology developed at the Xerox Research Centre Europe. Bringing NLP to healthcare may not be obvious at first, but the insight for the application came when researchers talked to domain experts. They heard that the majority of health information is still in unstructured form, even in electronic medical records, and that extracting that information would provide useful indicators for a variety of purposes. In the ALADIN project (an acronym best translated as “assistant for the automatic detection and fighting of [hospital-acquired] infections”), Xerox developed a solution that can analyze event information in patient records – such as symptoms, drugs, and types of bacteria found – and identify risks and trends relevant to developing infections. If a risk is likely, the system alerts caregivers, hopefully limiting the spread of the infection.
There are numerous advanced technologies and practices that can be transferred from other domains, for example: real-time fraud detection from the financial industry, workflow automation from business process management, the use of business ethnography from office work optimization, social network analytics from advertising, simulation-based training from the airline industry, and many others.
From: www.PharmacyTechnician.org
Pharmacy Technicians know the importance of absolute accuracy in prescriptions and the need for error free prescribing every time they are given an order to fill or assist the pharmacist in fulfilling the order. In the pharmacy profession there is no room for errors. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services e-prescribing can be defined as a doctor’s ability to electronically submit an accurate prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point of care. In a recent article published in the New York Times by Randall Stross, research found 37 errors for every 100 paper prescriptions compared to 7 per 100 for individuals that used e-prescribing programs and software. The article also goes on to report only about 36 percent of all Rx’s were sent electronically in the U.S. in 2011.
With the invention of e-prescribing Pharmacy Technicians may find they may need to attend training on electronic prescribing and protocol in the pharmacy may change as more pharmacies adapt to more efficient and electronically savy ways of doing business. Electronic prescribing also cuts down on the cost of medication errors caused due to bad hand writing and misinterpretation of Rx’s by those working in the pharmacy. Medication errors can result in death, serious illness, and legal consequences.
From: www.carecloud.com
By: Ahmed Mori
Health IT is a hot topic for healthcare journalists today. Now that news moves incredibly quickly, journalists scourge Twitter and news aggregators for leads and keep their ear to the ground for ONC and CMS updates on developments like Meaningful Use.
A number of sources have established themselves as leaders in the field. Here are five of their must-follow Twitter accounts.
Healthcare IT News – @HITNewsTweet
Healthcare IT News is a critical resource for doctors, journalists, software developers and entrepreneurs in the health IT field. Their tweets contain valuable and timely information, ranging from articles about the connection between IT and the physician-patient relationship to webinars that help practices optimize performance.
SearchHealthIT – Brian Eastwood, @searchhealthIT
SearchHealth IT targets healthcare technology professionals, providing useful information related to building and maintaining health IT infrastructures. Follow site editor Brian Eastwood to learn about the latest in EHRs, mHealth and telemedicine.
Government Health IT – @GovHIT
Following 2009′s HITECH Act, the government is playing a much more active role in the development of healthcare technology. Government Health IT helps keep you in the loop on how government is driving the adoption of IT in healthcare.
FierceHealth IT – @fiercehealthIT
Where do health IT leaders turn for their weekly news? FierceHealth IT delivers news developments, industry trends and thought pieces for health IT CIOs and health IT managers.
MobiHealthNews – @MobiHealthNews, Brian Dolan @MobileHealth
We’ve profiled Brian Dolan before, but we think MobiHealthNews as a site deserves significant recognition as well. The site reports on various aspects of health IT, from iPads and mHealth to the role social media plays in health IT.
From: www.EMRSpecialists.com
As part of President Obama’s commitment to reducing regulatory burden, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius today announced that HHS will initiate a process to postpone the date by which certain health care entities have to comply with International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10).
The final rule adopting ICD-10 as a standard was published in January 2009 and set a compliance date of October 1, 2013 – a delay of two years from the compliance date initially specified in the 2008 proposed rule. HHS will announce a new compliance date moving forward.
“ICD-10 codes are important to many positive improvements in our health care system,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “We have heard from many in the provider community who have concerns about the administrative burdens they face in the years ahead. We are committing to work with the provider community to reexamine the pace at which HHS and the nation implement these important improvements to our health care system.”
ICD-10 codes provide more robust and specific data that will help improve patient care and enable the exchange of our health care data with that of the rest of the world that has long been using ICD-10. Entities covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) will be required to use the ICD-10 diagnostic and procedure codes.
From: www.HealthCareers.com
By: Andrea Santiago
Healthcare posted modest job growth in March, as compared to healthcare job growth in recent months. According to the most recent employment data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare added 26,000 jobs in March.
During March, healthcare jobs grew evenly among inpatient and outpatient settings. Physician offices added 7,600 jobs, and hospitals also added 8,100 new jobs during the month.
Other jobs were added in home healthcare (+3,900), nursing and residential care facilities (+5,800), and outpatient care centers (+2,600).
The unemployment rate for the healthcare industry is at 5.3 percent, much lower than the national overall unemployment rate of 8.2 percent.
From: www.BirminghamMedicalNews.com
By: Laura Freeman
When people go into healing professions, they think about saving lives and relieving suffering. The business side of medicine rarely tops the list of things to learn.
However, to continue helping patients, healthcare providers need to take a realistic approach to the dollars and cents side of sustaining a practice. That includes a strategy for handling the sensitive issue of overdue accounts.
"If you haven't been paid, the general rule of thumb for turning it over to collections is—the sooner, the better. Within 60 to 90 days is the maximum. New debts are much easier to collect than old ones, when the visit is still fresh in the patient's mind and information is easier to access," said Sherri McClain, Vice President of Portfolio Management for Franklin Collection Service, Inc.
Most collection agencies work on a contingency basis. You don't pay unless they collect. However, older debts can increase the contingency rate and reduce the odds of collecting.
"Providers need a user-friendly, but consistent policy," said Dick Williams, President of Healthcare Financial Services LLC. "If patients are having difficulty paying, the most important thing they can do is communicate. Often, a reasonable payment schedule can be worked out within their ability to pay."
McClain added, "We try to approach them and let them know we understand that bad things can happen to good people, but we want to work with them to see if we can find a way to work it out."
Collections agencies sometimes offer contract billing to handle the extra paperwork of arrangements that allow patients to pay off their balances in monthly payments.
"We take care of the billing and followup, providers get paid, and patients can protect their credit," Williams said.
The Legal Side Of Collections
To collect debts, collection agencies use information and communication technologies to locate and contact debtors. Another important advantage they offer is their understanding of federal and state regulations.
"The collections process is highly regulated, and laws vary by state and county," Williams said. "Members of The American Collectors Association should be up-to-date on regulations and the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In medical collections, they should also understand HIPPA and the need for sensitivity in patient relations."
In Alabama, the statute of limitations is three years on an open account. However, having patients sign an acknowledgement of responsibility when setting up the account can lengthen that time.
McClain explained, "Where the debtor has acknowledged responsibility, the statute of limitations for collecting debts in Alabama is extended to six years under a contract. Under a judgment, the statue of limitations is ten years, and it can be extended to 20."
If a debtor refuses to pay, the debt can be reported to credit reporting agencies or legal action can be taken. Keeping credit reports clear can be sufficient motivation for some to respond. When there is no response, some agencies send information to credit reporting agencies automatically, and others do so based on how their clients choose to proceed.
Preventing Payment Problems
Medical bills can get into a collection situation because of major illnesses or changes in health coverage or employment. Sometimes, however, it can be a simple case of confusion.
"Patients often think insurance takes care of everything, and they are surprised to find it doesn't," Williams said. "One visit to the emergency room can generate bills from several providers that drop at different times and then have to go through insurance. It can be a while before patients get all the bills and get a clear picture of what they owe."
McClain added, "Patients may think that when they pay the hospital bill that the ER physician and other services are included. When they start getting bills for imaging, pathology and other charges, they may think they have already paid them.
Keeping credit reports clear motivates some debtors to respond. When there is no response, some agencies automatically file reports and others do so as instructed by clients.
"Another issue is that no one really knows how healthcare legislation is going to impact payments. A lot of conversations are going on about it. The best advice is to make sure accounts are in the best possible condition.
"It helps to be proactive by collecting copays up front and verifying that there have been no changes in insurance, employment, address or phone number. As always, it's important to be diligent about get insurance preapprovals.
"The doctors and medical facilities that provide services deserve to be paid fairly for the work they do."
From:
www.eweek.comBy:
Brian T. Horowitz
By acquiring ClearTrial, Oracle gains a single-software suite that allows pharmaceutical companies to manage clinical trials from planning to payment.
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In its ongoing effort to boost its health care portfolio, Oracle is acquiring ClearTrial, a provider of cloud clinical trial software. The deal gives Oracle a new portfolio of applications designed to help manage the long, often-costly research process involved in the development of new prescription drugs.
The enterprise software giant will combine ClearTrial's platform with its own software for clinical trials to make a single suite to handle the clinical drug trial process from planning to payment.
Announced March 29, the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2012. The two companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
With Oracle's deep software lineup for the life sciences and health care applications, teaming up with the company seemed like a good fit, according to ClearTrial CEO Mike Soenen.
"As the leading provider of technology and applications for the life sciences and health care industries, Oracle is the next logical step in our ability to best service our customers and extend our solution's reach," Soenen said in a statement.
Like Oracle, ClearTrial provides software for clinical drug trials. ClearTrial's applications offer embedded intelligence to help life science companies manage the costs and complexities of launching new drugs.
Oracle also offers software such as the Health Sciences Trial Center application, which allows drug researchers to get a single real-time view of multiple clinical trials in the cloud.
Biopharmaceutical manufacturers such as Astra-Zeneca and Genentech use ClearTrial's software.
With the acquisition, drug investigators will be able to more effectively manage clinical drug trials across different locations, outsourcers, treatment types and trial phases, according to Oracle.
ClearTrial's strength is in helping researchers forecast the costs of drug trials, Oracle reported. Software combined from the two companies will make budget planning and forecasting more effective for drug manufacturers as well as medical device and diagnostic companies, Oracle reported. Contract research organizations (CROs) will also benefit from the acquisition, according to Oracle.
"Biopharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic companies, as well as CROs, are facing increasing pressure to deliver clinical development projects on time and within budget," Neil de Crescenzo, senior vice president and general manager for Oracle Health Sciences, said in a statement.
It will also allow drug researchers to gain transparency into the performance of trials as well as collaboration, investing and decision making, according to the company. It enables trial managers to create reports on the cost, resources and timelines for drug research projects.
In addition, analytics and algorithms in ClearTrial's software help researchers make decisions on the efficacy of drugs. ClearTrial offers 200 therapeutic indications, along with data from 90 countries.
By combining ClearTrial with the Oracle Health Sciences Cloud, Oracle hopes to make the clinical development process more cost-effective and better integrate data on clinical development and managing the safety of drugs.
The Health Sciences Cloud provides a secure environment for life science companies to capture data, report patient outcomes, manage drug supplies and automate research clinics.
"Adding ClearTrial to the Oracle Health Sciences Cloud will help our customers streamline the clinical development process and help them bring therapies to market with greater predictability and at lower costs," said de Crescenzo.
"Clinical trials are being planned and managed with unprecedented rigor and specificity, given the industry's trend toward globalization of R&D and the continued growth in outsourcing," said Soenen.
Oracle and ClearTrial will continue with separate product plans until the deal closes.
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From: www.EWeek.com
By: Brian T. Horowitz
Print Version Sponsored By Hopes are high for technology to improve patient care, yet IT departments need to invest in the infrastructure required to run electronic health record (EHR) applications, according to a new report by CDW Healthcare.
CDW offers IT services to more than 15,000 health care organizations in the United States, including providers in rural areas as well as large hospital networks.
The research, called "Healthcare IT Tipping Point Report," found that 84 percent of caregivers believe health care IT improves the care of patients.
For the survey, CDW interviewed 200 health care IT professionals and 202 caregivers—doctors and nurses—at large hospitals between Jan. 9 and Jan. 23. The company announced the results March 6.
About 40 percent of caregivers said health care IT gives them more time to spend with patients.
"With well-conceived and supported health care IT, caregivers spend less time accessing and verifying information and more time using that information," Bob Rossi, vice president of CDW Healthcare, told eWEEK in an email. "Moreover, new endpoint systems put tools and information within reach of the caregiver while they are with the patient—proximity is a big advantage in utilization."
In the survey, 85 percent of doctors and nurses believed that the information gleaned from health care IT applications would lead to better patient care, while 72 percent thought technology would make care more accurate.
Meanwhile, 68 percent of caregivers interviewed believed IT workflows could help them follow up with patients.
Despite the prospects for patient care, the report exposed some challenges for IT in health care as far as networking, storage and computing, according to Rossi.
"As a report card on the performance of IT departments at large hospitals, this is a solid A," said Rossi. "That said, the survey results also demonstrate how out-of-balance systems can result in user frustration and wasted time."
Balancing new caregiver systems with infrastructure investments is a challenge, said Rossi.
"Consider that 58 percent of the surveyed health care IT professionals admitted to adding a server, storage or network program after hearing complaints of slowed systems from users," he noted.
Even as EHRs help doctors follow a patient's history, the applications can run slow without the proper infrastructure and the EHR software, or "endpoint systems," can be unintuitive, CDW reported.
"Without the supporting infrastructure, endpoint systems can end up slow, unreliable or extremely difficult to use," said Rossi. "No matter how great the tool, if the caregiver has to wait minutes to access it, or can only access it sporadically, the value will be substantially less."
The report also warned of a "crunch" as more wireless devices consume bandwidth and EHR and health information exchange (HIE) applications work off system resources.
"Just to add mobile devices to the networks, hospitals have had to increase infrastructure," Rossi noted. Of the health professionals surveyed, 55 percent added wireless devices, 44 percent purchased more security hardware or software, 38 percent added more software applications, 32 percent upgraded wireless network capacity and 32 percent bought new application servers, he said.
Rossi recommended that health care organizations anticipate the capacity needed for health IT, including wireless devices and EHR systems, ahead of time.
"Responding to user concerns after the fact is the most expensive approach to meeting infrastructure needs," said Rossi. "By capacity planning first, IT leaders can take the pressure off of infrastructure investment."
From: www.Money.USNews.com
From: Jada A. Graves
Best Health Care Jobs
If you think landing a cushy job in healthcare requires Odyssean years of study and grunt work followed by decades to pay back student loans, you'd be mistaken. Although there are fast-growing occupations on our list that demand rigorous training (as they should), the Department of Labor projects that the number of healthcare support jobs (like medical assistant or clinical laboratory technician) should increase more rapidly than any other major occupational group up to the year 2020. Neither job requires more than an associate's degree. [See the 50 Best Jobs of 2012.] Actually, there should be outstanding prospects for almost any job within this industry. Approximately 5.6 million new openings will appear for healthcare workers and those working in social services. For registered nurses, which made No. 1 on our Best Jobs for 2012 list, more than 700,000 positions are expected to open up in the next few years.
Here's our list of the Best Healthcare Jobs of 2012:
#1-Registered Nurse
#2-Pharmacist
#3-Medical Assistant
#4-Physical Therapist
#5-Occupational Therapist
#6-Clinical Laboratory Technician
#7-Paramedic
#8-Massage Therapist
From: www.HealthCareGuy.com
By: Shahid Shah
I’ve written and presented recently on a number of “Do’s and Dont’s” around medical device integration, mobile health, EHRs, and various related topics. Some of you have asked if I could do something similar on the subject of RFID. Since I’m not an expert on the topic, I reached out to Yedidia Blonder, a Product Manager at Vizbee RFID Solutions. Vizbee offers RFID applications for multiple industries, including a patient and hospital asset tracking application for healthcare institutions. They’re really good at what they do and I agree with their general approach. Here’s what Yedidia had to say about the do’s and dont’s of RFID in hospitals:
RFID (radio frequency identification) is a very powerful tool for hospital management. With its ability to identify tagged persons and objects individually, from distances of meters away, RFID can assist in equipment localization and protection, prevention and containment of hospital acquired infections, infant protection, and improvement of the patient experience and safety.
But simply installing any RFID system in your hospital does not mean that the benefits are now yours for the taking. If you want everything to run smoothly and to get maximum ROI out of RFID, here are some do’s and don’ts for efficient use and implementation of healthcare RFID.
- Don’t rely on existing infrastructure without checking it thoroughly. For example, if the tracking system picked relies on a WiFi based technologies, users tend to think that they can rely on the existing infrastructure in the hospital. Usually this is not the case; the existing infrastructure needs to be expanded in order to support the new usage. Check with your hospital computer staff what the capacity of the existing WiFi network is, and what the daily usage is for hospital activities. Then check with the tracking system provider to see what bandwidth is required for system operation. Do the math.If the technology is not WiFi based, check with the system provider if it requires independent infrastructure (aside from the tags, readers and software). If so, check with your computer staff about the existence of the infrastructure (and usage stats, as above). If it does not exist, investigate what costs and efforts are involved in installing it (at proper capacity).
- Do assess the exact hardware and configuration solution along with the number of persons/objects you will be tagging. Too many RFID tags operating on the same frequency in a small area can interfere with each other. If you need to track many items in such a location you might need (as one example) tags that emit signals only when moving between zones.
- Do check that the system you choose can distinguish between the important zones in your institution. For example, if you need room level localization, make sure the system you get has the ability to distinguish between rooms easily even if the hospital rooms have plaster walls. Additionally, heavy metal objects or extra-large pieces of equipment may interfere with localization and give wrong results if the system settings don’t take that into consideration.
- Don’t get software with an interface that looks like you need a degree in IT to understand it. Hospital RFID systems are primarily used by doctors and nurses, so make it as intuitive and automatic to the non-technical person as possible. Any maps on the user interface should be a clean, clear picture of the floor layout. Symbols (for medical equipment, medication, restricted areas) should be the same symbols that are commonly used in hospitals. Make sure the system has easy and guided navigation: if a staff member has entered the “patient tracking” menu, he should only be seeing patient tracking functions, not equipment tracking functions or information – or any other options. This way the staff will not feel “Data Overload!” when they sign in.
- Don’t require the nurses to set the software settings. Default settings for RFID tags should be pre-programmed into the system, with settings determined in advance by the system provider in consultation with the hospital staff, so that all the nurse has to do is click “infant tag” “staff tag” “mobile equipment tag”, and the system will know how to respond to the tag.
- Do integrate into the existing work routines of the staff. Make sure the system has a profile definition functionality. When staff members log into the system, they should get options that are relevant to their profile (a “nurse profile” staff member will start with a menu of options relevant to nurse duties in the hospital, and the same for a doctor, a computer technician, etc.). Telling a nurse who has worked in the hospital for 20 years that she now needs to spend more time learning how to work the system than deal with patients will lower the efficiency of your RFID system dramatically. It won’t be used correctly and/or it will be hated – neither of which is good for ROI. Beyond knowing what options to display according to profile, a good system will also use machine learning capabilities to tailor its display to each individual. After a week or two of usage, the system should be able to determine which capacity is used the most by Nurse Joan (say, equipment tracking) and place that as the focus on the screen, allowing for immediate access to searching. If later on task management becomes the most used capability, it should take center stage.
- Don’t just think that RFID is about asset tracking. What RFID can do for a healthcare institution is far beyond tracking down wheelchairs. If you’re installing an RFID system, make sure you use it to its fullest capabilities. Examples might include infection control, minimizing patient wait time for tests, preventing infant abduction and assuring the correct patient receives the correct medication.