Health Data Management articles from September 2008

Health Data Management archives from September 2008

Tearing down, building up.
September 1, 2008... Ive always found the demolition of a hospital even one well beyond its useful architectural life to be a bittersweet occasion. The journalist in me thinks about the countless health care encounters that took place and an era of medicine that...

HDM On The Web.
September 1, 2008... WHITE PAPERS The Health Data Management Web site hosts an extensive library of white papers that provides our readers with an in-depth explanation of technologies being used in the field and how health care organizations are using these...

Today's mobile computer carts are far more advanced and user-friendly than those sold two years ago.(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... AGREE Mary Ann Prosyniuk Medford, Ore. The carts are better than the ones sold four years ago, they are lighter and have a smaller footprint. But the ease to personalize height and screen tilt, and the weight balance and wheel...

I.T. Lessons from the Flood.
September 1, 2008... When the rains came to Iowa and much of the Midwest in June, the Cedar River running through Cedar Rapids started rising. But Mercy Medical Center was 10 blocks from the river and three blocks beyond a 500-year flood plain. By June 13,...

Industry: House I.T. Bill Unworkable.
September 1, 2008... Health information technology legislation getting attention in the U.S. House is another important step toward the long-overdue upgrade of Americas health care system by enacting pioneering yet practical health reform measures, according to a...

Providence, HHS Agree on Privacy Plan.
September 1, 2008... Seattle-based Providence Health & Services has agreed to pay a $100,000 resolution fine to the Department of Health and Human Services for privacy violations. In addition, Providence will implement a corrective plan to increase protection of...

FDA OKs Intel Telemedicine Device.
September 1, 2008... The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the marketing of a new telemedicine device and related services that Intel Corp. is developing. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, best known for its computer chips, is piloting the...

CCHIT issues PHR recommendations.(Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Newsline Digest presents highlights of the latest health care I.T. news as reported on the Health Data Management Web site. For extended versions of these and many other original news stories, visit www.healthdatamanagement.com. A task...

N.C. Blues Jump Start e-Prescribing.
September 1, 2008... Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is taking several steps to entice physicians to use electronic prescribing, including offering a $1,000 incentive to those who climb on the bandwagon. The Chapel Hill, N.C.-based payer is...

GPO Endorses Supply Standards.
September 1, 2008... The group purchasing organization unit of Premier Inc. has endorsed the supply chain standards created by GS1 Healthcare US, a Lawrenceville, N.J.-based standards development organization. San Diego-based Premier has pledged to adopt the...

RelayHealth, Microsoft Team Up.
September 1, 2008... The RelayHealth division of McKesson Corp. will offer its patient-physician connectivity software through Microsoft Corp.s HealthVault consumer health platform. RelayHealths software enables patients to communicate electronically with...

Open Source Group Picks Guidelines.
September 1, 2008... The Open eHealth Foundation will use existing Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise profiles as a guideline for developing open source components for exchanging medical information. Three vendorsAgfa Healthcare, InterComponentWare and Sun...

Survey: EHR a Big Challenge for Docs.
September 1, 2008... Selecting and implementing an electronic health records system is one of the five major challenges of running a physician group practice, according to results of a survey of practice managers by the Medical Group Management Association. ...

Report Eyes Future Decision Support.
September 1, 2008... Clinical decision support software systems of the future increasingly will be used to support diagnostic decision making, as well as assist clinicians in treatment options, according to a recent report from Datamonitor, a London-based research...

MedAvant Bankrupt, Will Sell.
September 1, 2008... Claims clearinghouse Med-Avant Healthcare Solutions in Atlanta has filed for voluntary reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The vendor also has filed a motion to sell its assets to Marlin Equity, an El Segundo,...

Research Targets Enhanced Monitoring.
September 1, 2008... IBM Corp. and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology are developing technology they say could dramatically increase the amount of real-time patient monitoring data available to clinicians. The research, initially focused on...

Senior-care Chain to Use Mobile Devices.
September 1, 2008... The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, a Sioux Falls, S.D.-based chain of senior care facilities, will implement hand-held computers from Socket Mobile Inc., Newark, Calif. The provider will deploy 3,200 devices at about 230...

MedeFinance Raises $50 Million.
September 1, 2008... MedeFinance Inc., an Emeryville, Calif.-based company that sells health care revenue cycle management software, has secured $50 million in funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Boston, and existing investors. The investors, in turn, acquired a...

Network Links Association Job Sites.
September 1, 2008... More than 60 associations have joined the National Healthcare Career Network that launched this spring. The American Hospital Association and American Society for Association Executives, along with the Center for Association Leadership, a...

Sponge-Count Vendor Raises Capital.
September 1, 2008... RF Surgical Systems Inc., a vendor of radio frequency technology to help ensure sponges arent retained in patients after procedures, has raised $8.2 million in a new round of private financing. With the new funds from Menlo Park,...

Docs buy interpreter service.(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Physician-owned Emergent Medical Associates has acquired a majority interest in Language Access Network LLC, a vendor of real-time, on-demand language interpretation services for hospitals. Acquisition terms were not disclosed. Los...

Dell Enhances Tablet's Touch Response.
September 1, 2008... Dell Inc., Round Rock, Texas, has introduced a free upgrade for the Latitude XT convertible Tablet PC offering three ways to interact with the device using touch. Users can scroll by placing two fingers on the screen and moving them...

Siemens to Market Single-Sign-On.
September 1, 2008... Malvern, Pa.-based Siemens Healthcare will resell single-sign-on and authentication software from Imprivata Inc., Lexington, Mass. Siemens says its customers will be able to integrate Imprivatas OneSign product into Siemens applications as...

Wishing For a Better EHR: Electronic health records users share their wish lists for added functionality.
September 1, 2008... Guillermo Diaz, M.D., really likes his electronic health records systemfor the most part. The chief medical officer of QueensCare Family Clinics, comprising six community care centers in Los Angeles, appreciates having more patient data at his...

Assessing the value of CCHIT.(Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology)(Report)
September 1, 2008... When John Scibal, O.D., an optometrist at Carteret Optometry in Morehead City, N.C., goes to an optometry conference, eight to 10 vendors are hawking electronic health records systems. But when he went to last Mays TEPR 2008 conference in...

What Doctors Want from PHRs.
September 1, 2008... Consumer adoption of personal health records is inevitable, says John Scibal, O.D., an optometrist at Carteret Optometry in Morehead City, N.C. They make perfect sense, he adds. Thats because a PHR given by a patient to a physician...

Winning the Support of Clinicians for I.T.: CIOs share the lessons they've learned as they've reached out to physicians and nurses.
September 1, 2008... CIOs who want to make sure that physicians and nurses will support a major information technology project need to start with the basics. Sometimes we lose track of the fact that physicians and nurses got into this line of work to help patients,...

Should Doctors Be Paid To Serve On Committees?
September 1, 2008... A growing number of CIOs are coming to the same conclusion: The best way to make sure physicians show up at critical I.T. committee meetings is to pay them for their time. As it prepares to roll out inpatient and outpatient records...

Cutting and Pasting in the OR: Incorporating I.T. into the operating room is not easy, but enhanced communications may result.
September 1, 2008... The fourth in a long family line of physicians, general and vascular surgeon John Lucas III, M.D., is able to take the long view when it comes to technology. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father practiced with tools far less...

Twelve years later, to market.(applications designed to support medical documentation)
September 1, 2008... For insight into the effort it takes to develop an information system for the operating room, look to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. After searching unsuccessfully in the mid-1990s for a commercial system to automate its OR, the...

Missing pieces.(hospitals computer system)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Greenwood (Miss.) Leflore Hospital has a digital clinical data repository that stores lab tests, pathology reports, radiology reports, histories and other data going back for six years. Its about all the data you want, says John Lucas, III,...

Following a Moving Target: Faced with a changing health information technology market, Cerner Corp. is expanding into other areas to offer new health care services.
September 1, 2008... The I.T. market is maturing and provider reimbursements are falling, so while the I.T. market continues to grow, the growth rates that Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner has enjoyed arent going to continue, says Trace Devanny, president. Youre not...

A Different Kind of E-Mail: Three organizations shift to new e-mail server applications that take advantage of Linux.
September 1, 2008... Health care organizations have been relatively slow to jump on the Linux bandwagon and deploy the server operating system. As an open-source platform, Linux was developed, and is continually updated, by a vast network of computer programmers....

Help is at hand: a cardiologist uses a handheld device to help avoid adverse medication interactions and calculate proper doses.(Report)
September 1, 2008... Marc Tenzer, M.D., spent a recent Saturday at the bedside of one of his cardiac patients who was in an intensive care unit suffering from shock. The cardiologist had inserted a catheter into the patients heart to measure various pressures and...

Testing the PHR Options: Massachusetts Blues plan adds Google Health to its list of PHR offerings for enrollees.
September 1, 2008... While theres plenty of hype about personal health records, it remains to be seen what modelif anyof these consumer-driven records will win widespread market acceptance. So Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts is hedging its bets,...

Contracts Update.
September 1, 2008... American Medical Sales Inc. PACS Axminister Medical, Los Angeles Carrollton (Ga.) Ear, Nose & Throat C.T. Harris Imaging, Salisbury, N.C. Encino (Calif.) Medical Center Green County Hospital, Eutaw, Ala. ...

What's taking so long? Building consensus on standards takes time.
September 1, 2008... It is a widely accepted notion that a more streamlined health care system can reduce medical errors and save providers, payers and patients frustration, time and money. Even more widely accepted is that information technology is critical to...