Health Management Technology articles from December 2005

Health Management Technology archives from December 2005

The HMT Clios.(Health Management Technology)
December 1, 2005... Most HMT subscribers don't pay a dime to receive this magazine. It comes to you courtesy of advertisers. You are high enough up on the food chain, so advertisers pay big to capture your eyeballs when you read an article. Because most of the...

HHS awards almost $40 million.(National Health Information Network)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in early October awarded three contracts and 16 grants to nudge the adoption of health information technology. The contracts totaled $17.5 million. They included: * $3.3 million to the...

CSI--healthcare IT style.(Commission on Systemic Interoperability)(Inforamtion Technology)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... To foster a national health information network, the federal government should develop a patient authentication standard and lead efforts to give providers financial incentives and regulatory exemptions. Those are two key recommendations among...

Majority favors electronic exchange--if private.(national health information network)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Nearly three out of four Americans (72 percent) favor the establishment of a national health information network if patient privacy can be secured. Individuals want to review who sees their medical information, according to a poll of 800 adults...

Removing legal barriers to IT adoption.(Government Watch)
December 1, 2005... At last, the federal government is taking steps to encourage adoption of e-prescribing and EHRs and, equally important, to protect those making the effort to adopt from prohibitive federal statutes. In October, the HHS Inspector General (OIG)...

IT can fight healthcare fraud.(Health Information Management)
December 1, 2005... Health information technology can help fight healthcare fraud, which costs the government an estimated $51 billion to $170 billion a year, say two recent AHIMA reports. Automated coding software and an NHIN could offer "substantial savings,"...

Nearly free e-Rx for Nevada docs.(Physician Practices)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Sierra Health Services and the Clark County Medical Society, both based in Las Vegas, are launching an initiative to provide low-cost electronic prescribing for Nevada's 5,000 practicing physicians. As part of the program, physician members of...

AHIC has marching orders.(American Health Information Community)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt's newly formed American Health Information Community chose its top three topics to tackle at its first meeting in October in Washington, D.C. They are: personal health records, telemonitoring for patients with chronic...

Siemens-3M Strategic Alliance Helps Providers Improve Reimbursement.
December 1, 2005... Malvern, Pa.-based Siemens Medical Solutions is embedding 3M Medical Necessity Dictionaries in its Soarian health information solution. This will allow users in hospitals and physician offices to validate medical necessity, detect coding and...

GHX to Acquire Neoforma for an Estimated $200 Million.
December 1, 2005... Global Healthcare Exchange LLC (GHX) is acquiring Neoforma Inc. in San Jose, Calif. Both firms provide supply chain management solutions for healthcare buyers and sellers. Michael Mahoney, current GHX CEO, will continue to lead GHX...

What you know, what you have, what you are: state-of-the-art biometric authentication senses living body parts to ensure positive identification.(Security/Authentication)(Cover Story)
December 1, 2005... Fake inspectors claiming to be from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) attempted to gain entry into three Boston, Detroit and Los Angeles hospitals, according to an August 22, 2005 report in The Washington...

Arming labs with biopreparedness tools: disease trends--analyzing, tracking and being prepared in local communities--has never been a more important topic. The roles of laboratorians and lab managers will be paramount to the nation's success.(Laboratory Information Systems)
December 1, 2005... The threat of an epidemic, regardless of whether it is naturally occurring or is the result of a chemical or biological agent, has always been greatly alarming for the healthcare industry. Several incidents in past decades have proven that...

Patient monitoring in the fast lane: New York emergency department uses a virtual local area network within their existing AP network to continuously monitor patient vital signs, while running other applications on the same network.(Wireless: Case History)
December 1, 2005... At Samaritan Medical Center (SMC) in Watertown, N.Y., we needed to continuously monitor patients' vital signs as we moved them from the emergency department (ED) to radiology. To maintain the monitoring signals, we planned to implement wireless...

Embedded coaches lead to CPOE victory: Northwestern Memorial Hospital designs a system to bring point-of-care expertise to physicians as they adopt computerized order entry in everyday work.(Computerized Physician Order Entry)
December 1, 2005... As one of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's physicians used the new computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system for the first time, he reached that moment of puzzled hesitation that tests every new system. What he did next has helped make...

SRS Software Inc.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Campbell Clinic Orthopaedics contracted with SRS Software Inc. to digitize its patient records by providing SRS Freedom Chart Manager to its 36 physicians and 32 licensed rehabilitation specialists in four locations.

McKesson.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Inc. (SSFHS) healthcare system, with 12 campuses in Indiana and Illinois, selected McKesson to automate its seven emergency departments. SSFHS will deploy Horizon Emergency Care, part of McKesson's Horizon...

ZixCorp.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) is using ZixCorp's PocketScript e-prescribing in a one-year trial outreach initiative. Participants can transmit prescriptions via the PocketScript application on a BlackBerry wireless...

Imprivata.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Imprivata, the supplier of OneSign, implemented its enterprise single sign-on (ESSO) healthcare appliance at five new healthcare facilities nationwide. They include Good Samaritan Indiana, Lancaster General Hospital, NorthEast Medical Center,...

NightHawk Radiology Services.(acqusition of DayHawk Radiology Services)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... NightHawk Radiology Services acquired DayHawk Radiology Services to provide 24-hour weekend coverage and expand its weeknight coverage by six hours to hospitals across the United States. Previously, NightHawk offered coverage to U.S. hospitals...

Misys Healthcare Systems.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Cleveland Clinic Home Care Services selected Misys Homecare to manage its clinical, financial and administrative IT needs. About 300 clinicians and 140 business personnel use the system to serve more than 1,200 new admissions each month.

The Beryl Companies.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Montgomery General Hospital selected The Beryl Companies, based in Bedford, Texas, to manage its physician referral services. The 191-bed acute care, nonprofit hospital serves communities in the greater Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metro...

RelayHealth Corp.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... CPPN, the physician/provider managed care organization of Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan, signed a three-year licensing agreement with RelayHealth to link its more than 1,100 physicians and authorized staff with patients...

Enterprise Performance Systems Inc. (EPSi).(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... North Kansas City Hospital purchased a full suite of decision support applications from Enterprise Performance Systems Inc. based in Chesterfield, Mo. The 351-bed nonprofit regional medical center serves the North Kansas City area as well as...

Meru Networks Inc.(Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine contracts )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine chose Meru Networks' wireless LAN for its 6,000-member medical community. The Meru WLAN infrastructure enables wireless access to e-mail and the Internet, and it also supports...

LighthouseMD.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Southbury Medical Associates (Southbury, Conn.), Robert G. Alexander, M.D., PC (Stoneham, Mass.) and Occupational Therapy Associates of Wakefield (Wakefield, Mass.) have selected CareTracker, LighthouseMD's Internet-based practice management...

RxEOB.(information technology services contract)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Triple-S of Puerto Rico, a Blue Shield licensee covering more than 1.2 million lives, selected RxEOB's Web-based pharmacy benefit suite of solutions to enhance patient care and reduce pharmaceutical costs for Puerto Rican residents. Richmond,...

Innovation Associates.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Scott & White Health Plan, a nonprofit HMO based in central Texas, has implemented Innovation Associates' PharmASSIST Enterprise Systems (workflow management and automated prescription dispensing) in six retail pharmacies in their network....

PatientKeeper Inc.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Kansas University Physicians Inc. (KUPI), multispecialty group practice in Kansas, selected PatientKeeper for advanced mobile computing solutions. The installation demonstrates PatientKeeper's ability to directly integrate its portfolio of...

Siemens Medical Solutions.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... The University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) installed Siemens Medical Solutions' Symbia system, incorporating TruePoint SPECT-CT (Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography/Computed Tomography) technology. UMHS expects that within the next...

Picis.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... OSF Healthcare System of Peoria, Ill., is automating six sites with Picis' CareSuite system. It replaces OSF's surgery systems with one, comprehensive solution that spans the entire surgical process. OSF Healthcare System consists of six acute...

AmerisourceBergen Technology Group.(NewsMakers)
December 1, 2005... Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has chosen Chesterbrook, Pa.-based AmerisourceBergen Technology Group's full suite of Bridge-MedPoint point-of-care medication verification, specimen identification, and transfusion verification patient...

Formulary for success: New Jersey hospital partners with decision support database vendor to develop a homegrown pharmacy information system.(Decision Support: Case History)(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... Holy Name Hospital, a 361-bed acute care hospital in Teaneck, N.J., was developing its own pharmacy information system and wanted to buy just clinical support databases from a vendor. Medi-Span was willing to sell its databases and not just...

Raising the bar: an Illinois medical center decides "really good" isn't good enough and sets out to lower an already low adverse drug event rate.(Bar Coding: Case History)
December 1, 2005... According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its 2000 report "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System," at least 44,000 and as many as 98,000 deaths due to "preventable adverse events" occur in hospitals each year. That exceeds...

A dose of RHIOlity: the toughest RHIO integration challenges are not technology-based.(Network/Systems Integration)
December 1, 2005... Remember how difficult it was to roll out enterprisewide orders and results, or group efforts to maximize adoption rates once CPOE went live? Who can forget the pain and suffering involved in bringing an e-MAR live? In their own ways, these...

Multicassette digital X-ray system.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Kodak has launched the DIRECTVIEW CR 975 computed radiography (CR) digital X-ray capture system. The multicassette platform simultaneously holds up to eight rigid cassettes queued for processing and another eight ready for imaging, which it can...

Upgraded EMR/PM solution.(eClinicalWorks practice management solution)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... eClinicalWorks has released version 6.7 of its integrated multilocation/multispecialty electronic medical record and practice management solution. The product now features a Web-style Patient Hub containing the patient's picture and pertinent...

Medical-grade outlet stripe.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Tripp Lite has added a new power stripe to its hospital/medical-grade line. The PS-615-HGULTRA is tested to U.S. and Canadian safety standards and is first in its class to be certified by TUV Rheinland of North America Inc. for use in medical...

Business activity monitoring.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... SunGard Workflow Solutions has added business activity monitoring (BAM) to its MACESS.exp business process management solution. The product includes content and process management, workflow, imaging, document storage, customer service,...

Next generation dictation input device.(SpeechMike)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Royal Philips Electronics released two upgraded versions of their SpeechMike dictation devices, both designed for improved one-handed use, especially with left- and small-handed users. The Classic has a standard four-position switch for...

Diagnostic LCDs.(liquid crystal displays)(NEC Display Solutions of America Inc)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... NEC's MD medical grade back-lit LCDs feature identical white points and are specifically designed to help physicians more accurately judge "before and after" patient scans or X-rays. The diagnostic series includes 19-inch 1MP, and 21-inch 2MP...

2MP medical color display.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Barco has added a high-performance BarcoMed display controller to its Color Coronis 2MP LCD designed for computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR) and positron emission tomography (PET) applications. The new controller supports the...

Biometric keystroke authentication.(Stinger Medical)(BioPassword Inc)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Stinger Medical and BioPassword Inc. have partnered to bring device-free biometric authentication to the mobile medical workstation market. BioPassword software authenticates users during logins by comparing their passwords to recordings of...

Medical simulation makes medical education better and safer.(Thought Leaders)
December 1, 2005... Healthcare organizations employ many technologies to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. In hospitals, for example, bar coding lowers the risk of medication errors. In many physician group practices, electronic medical record...