healthsystemcio.com

With the government piling on its Meaningful Use regulations, healthcare CIOs are under a lot of pressure to bring home the incentive bacon. For some, relaxation takes on traditional forms such as vacationing, biking or running. But Deane Morrison is no regular CIO. When he wants to decompress, it’s time to scale a mountain, perhaps [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Concord Hospital CIO Deane Morrison, Chapter 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A house is only as strong as the foundation on which it’s built. And an application environment is only as sound as the network infrastructure and data center upon which it rests. As such, Will Showalter and Sisters of Mercy Health System have undertaken a rebuild of their foundation to support the more than 4,000 [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Sisters of Mercy Health System VP & CIO Will Showalter, Chapter 3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

While pleased with some aspects of the final Meaningful Use Stage 1 rule, CHIME still views it as “an aggressive target for the majority of the nation’s hospitals,” according to an early analysis by the organization. Additionally, CHIME is predicting that many hospitals will have a difficult time qualifying for stimulus funding in subsequent stages of the incentive program, “as objectives increase in number and become harder to meet, and as other aspects of the stimulus program become more challenging.”

Though there are thousands of Meditech hospitals, only a handful are in the in the process of migrating from the Magic to 6.0 platform. Of course, those hospitals (and their CIOs) are being watched very closely by the Meditech community. One of those CIOs is Ed Ricks of Beaufort Memorial Hospital. Ricks is not only [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Beaufort Memorial Hospital VP of IS & CIO Ed Ricks, Chapter 3 [9:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (157)

The field of biomedical is full of acronyms — CPOE, HIE, EMR, HL7 — that may be interesting to IT professionals, but merely connote longer days, multiple logins and frustration for clinicians. While people in “healthcare” love it concept of CPOE, physicians feel it slow them down and turns them from docs into secretaries. I recently gave a ground rounds to our large children’s hospital to explain how biomedical informatics is evolving. There is a plan in my mind of how CPOE, HIE, etc., can come together leveraging bar code medication administration and actionable alerts, to prevent beside safety issues and improve care. What will also emerge is quality reporting which can provide data for large scale research.

Though there are thousands of Meditech hospitals, only a handful are in the in the process of migrating from the Magic to 6.0 platform. Of course, those hospitals (and their CIOs) are being watched very closely by the Meditech community. One of those CIOs is Ed Ricks of Beaufort Memorial Hospital. Ricks is not only [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Beaufort Memorial Hospital VP of IS & CIO Ed Ricks, Chapter 2 [10:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (214)

Though there are thousands of Meditech hospitals, only a handful are in the in the process of migrating from the Magic to 6.0 platform. Of course, those hospitals (and their CIOs) are being watched very closely by the Meditech community. One of those CIOs is Ed Ricks of Beaufort Memorial Hospital. Ricks is not only taking his facility to 6.0 and going best of breed in the ED, but using a new integration engine to bring it all together. To gather some lessons learned for healthsystemCIO.com readers, editor Anthony Guerra recently chatted with Ricks.

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Beaufort Memorial Hospital VP of IS & CIO Ed Ricks, Chapter 1 [10:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (334)

I felt compelled to write a few paragraphs about the most recent Leapfrog report that just came out on CPOE systems (full report right here on healthsystemcio.com), and their failure in repeated testing to catch a vast preponderance of errors that they should have caught. Leapfrog revealed that it had tested CPOE systems at 214 [...]

CPOE systems, on average, missed one half of routine medication order errors and a third of potentially fatal order errors during a study The Leapfrog Group conducted of 214 hospitals using its Web-based simulation tool. Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder characterized the results as “disturbing.” On a positive note, of the 102 hospitals that retook the test following a six-month interval, 94 percent showed some level of improvement. During the time between tests, hospitals adjusted their systems and protocols, said Binder.

Implementing a few clinical systems isn’t going to get you applause at El Camino Hospital. That’s because the organization has “been there, done that,” implementing the first CPOE system some 40 years ago. Considering that tough crowd, the CIO role isn’t for newcomers, and Greg Walton is no newcomer. With 40 years in the business [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/ El Camino Hospital CIO Greg Walton, Chapter 3 [8:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (31)

If you thought CIOs merely had to surmount the Stage 1 Meaningful Use bar to be successful, you’d be very wrong. That’s because the government has just begun enacting the massive mandates it’s planned for healthcare. Specifically, there’s a little conversion called ICD-10 that will run parallel with the mid-stages of HITECH and take more [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One-w/Norton Healthcare System VP of IS & CIO Joseph DeVenuto, Chapter 2 [11:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (73)

At first blush, you might not see a connection between Father’s Day and the industry’s abysmal computerized physician order entry adoption rates, highlighted in a recent KLAS report. You might be tempted to focus on the vendor involved in each instance to see what’s so user-unfriendly about their applications, or [...]

After spending the last 4 years, designing, planning, and implementing Computerized Physician Order Entry and closed loop medication at a large university hospital — covering neonatal to geriatric patients — few articles have served me better than reading the work of Dr. Dean Sittig and Dr. Joan Ash on how CPOE changes physician-nurse workflows and [...]

U.S. hospitals have “a long way to go” to reach the federal government’s proposed standard of entering at least 10 percent of orders electronically, according to the annual CPOE report from KLAS. Like its predecessors, the 2010 CPOE report features data gathered from almost every hospital in the United States (excluding military or Veterans Administration facilities) that was live with a commercial CPOE product through 2009. Titled CPOE: Traffic Jams on the Road to Meaningful Use, the report finds that only 14 percent of all U.S. hospitals have achieved the expected 10 percent CPOE level required for stage 1 of meaningful use.

 

 KLAS Finds Hospitals/Vendors Face Mammoth CPOE Challenges [30:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (386)

Implementing a few clinical systems isn’t going to get you applause at El Camino Hospital. That’s because the organization has “been there, done that,” implementing the first CPOE system some 40 years ago. Considering that tough crowd, the CIO role isn’t for newcomers, and Greg Walton is no newcomer. With 40 years in the business [...]

 

 One-on-One w/ El Camino Hospital CIO Greg Walton, Chapter 1 [12:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (278)

It didn’t take an act of Congress to start Carol Dresser and Hallmark Health implementing advanced clinical technologies. Hallmark — which includes Lawrence Memorial Hospital, Melrose-Wakefield Hospital, Hallmark Health Cancer Center and Hallmark Health Medical Center — is now working to increase adoption of CPOE and perfect its bedside bar coded medication administration processes. What [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Hallmark Health VP of IS Carol Dresser, Chapter 3 [10:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (129)

When Jody Albright took the IT reins at Overlake Hospital in December 2008, she had no idea industry-changing legislation was only a month away. And while HITECH has certainly accelerated some of her plans, Albright never expected the job to be a walk in the park. That’s because Overlake was in need of some heavy-duty [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Overlake Hospital Medical Center VP of IS & CIO Jody Albright, Chapter 2 [9:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (200)

When Jody Albright took the IT reins at Overlake Hospital in December 2008, she had no idea industry-changing legislation was only a month away. And while HITECH has certainly accelerated some of her plans, Albright never expected the job to be a walk in the park. That’s because Overlake was in need of some heavy-duty [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Overlake Hospital Medical Center VP of IS & CIO Jody Albright, Chapter 1 [14:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (105)

In what has become an interesting debate among CIOs — which to do first: CPOE or bedside bar-coded eMAR — smart individuals are coming down passionately on both sides. It’s also interesting that more than a few intrepid souls are counseling both should be done at the same time, though bandwidth constraints leave that group [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Hennepin County Medical Center CIO Joanne Sunquist, Chapter 2 [11:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (50)

In what has become an interesting debate among CIOs — which to do first: CPOE or bedside bar-coded eMAR — smart individuals are coming down passionately on both sides. It’s also interesting that more than a few intrepid souls are counseling both should be done at the same time, though bandwidth constraints leave that group [...]

 

 One-on-One-W-Joanne-Sunquist-Chapter-1.mp3 [10:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (129)

It didn’t take an act of Congress to start Carol Dresser and Hallmark Health implementing advanced clinical technologies. Hallmark — which includes Lawrence Memorial Hospital, Melrose-Wakefield Hospital, Hallmark Health Cancer Center and Hallmark Health Medical Center — is now working to increase adoption of CPOE and perfect its bedside bar coded medication administration processes. What [...]

 

 One-on-One w/Hallmark Health VP of IS Carol Dresser - Chapter 1 [10:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (492)

In every industry, there are organizations so pervasive they constitute bellwethers for the entire market segment. In healthcare IT, that company is Meditech. With over 2,200 customers and almost $400 million in software revenues last year, the Westwood, Mass.-based organization’s opinions on national policy — especially the HITECH Act’s Meaningful Use NPRM — should be taken very seriously by D.C.’s policy wonks. Offering those opinions to healthsystemCIO.com editor Anthony Guerra this exclusive interview is President and COO Howard Messing. In the following discussion, Messing — who was recently promoted to CEO subject to a perfunctory confirmation vote — offers his thoughts on the aforementioned HITECH Act, meeting customer demands for the latest software and much more.

 

 One-on-One-w/Meditech President & COO Howard Messing, Part II [17:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (341)

Over 75 percent of CIOs prefer to take on the massive challenge of implementing bedside-barcoded electronic medication administration records (eMAR) versus the equally massive task of converting to CPOE, according to the May healthsystemCIO.com SnapSurvey. But it doesn’t look like a weakness in the clinical decision support functionality of CPOE is to blame for the eMAR preference.