Data Analytics: Maximizing Its Power by Focusing on Simplicity
Data is available in many forms from many sources, but it needs to be collected and organized in a way that turns it into actionable information. That is the challenge and the opportunity for healthcare IT and providers: to collaboratively assemble the right, easy-to-use systems for data collection and analysis while maximizing benefits and minimizing the headaches of manual processes.
How COVID Impacted At-Home Care and Monitoring
Transitions of care went through a massive transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensuring patients moved safely between environments while remaining in-network became more complex with the needs and challenges of a mid-pandemic world, and avoiding readmissions and patient leakage became paramount. How has the industry risen to these growing changes, and what lies before us as the world strives to find a post-pandemic reality?
Pioneering New CVIS Combines Unification of Reporting and Automated Update of Clinical Guidelines
As new guidelines become available, a unified CVIS platform featuring structured reporting needs to integrate this information with no lag time to ensure the clinician has the latest data. Furthermore, by having access to the latest techniques, medical devices, protocols, and clinical recommendations, a cardiologist can offer the most accurate diagnoses and perform the most suitable procedures. Such innovations benefit the clinician and the clinic, but most importantly, they benefit the patient.
Using Patient Acuity to Inform Care Placement
Accurately and consistently assessing patient acuity is important not only for workload balancing, but also for placing patients in the correct level of care. In many instances, low-acuity patients receive treatment in high-acuity hospitals, even though they would be better placed in another facility. Utilization review research has shown that many acute hospital bed days do not meet the criteria for an acute level of care, and a significant portion of medical emergency admissions remain in the hospital for non-acute care.
Six Strategies to Strengthen Post-COVID Infection Prevention
Many groups are laying out strategies for better mitigating disease transmission in future pandemics, ranging from the White House’s National COVID Preparedness Plan to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Roadmap for Living With COVID. Meanwhile, Dr. Tom Talbot, chief hospital epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, encourages health systems to implement practices for securing more inclusive feedback, standardizing simple practices, and gauging success.
Teaming Up to Improve Interpersonal Communication in Healthcare
Oklahoma State University teamed up with Crucial Learning to address interpersonal communication among its medical students in three main categories: assumptions of incompetence, poor teamwork, and disrespect. The effort focused on the seven most crucial conversations in healthcare, with the goal of empowering staff to better communicate with each other.
Hand Hygiene: What to Consider When Increasing Compliance
While protecting the health and well-being of patients and staff is the top priority for healthcare facilities, it can also be a significant challenge. Even though hospitals use protective measures to reduce the transmission of germs, HAIs and COVID-19 continue to threaten facility occupants.
A Better Alternative for Combating Opioid Misuse Without Restricting Drug Access for Pain Patients
The new CDC draft removes the 2016 recommended ceilings on prescription doses for chronic pain patients and instead encourages doctors to exercise their best judgment. Even though the previous dosing ceilings were recommendations, they led to unintended consequences: States codified them, and physicians concerned with criminal or civil penalties misapplied the rigid standards by tapering patients too quickly or even refusing to provide treatment.
Three Steps to Reducing Health Inequities in the Latino Community
Many factors drive the health disparities affecting the Latino community, and these disparities are further exacerbated by the inaccessibility and unaffordability of U.S. healthcare. While the Affordable Care Act has narrowed some health disparities, Latino adults continue to report significantly higher uninsured rates than other groups. A 2020 Commonwealth Fund study revealed uninsured rates of 24.9% for Latinos, 14.4% for Blacks, and 8.6% for whites.
Defeating Diagnostic Deserts in Conflict Zones and at Home
A pilot project has brought together American and Canadian doctors to remotely train medical personnel in Yemen on patient diagnosis using a portable ultrasound device. Bridge to Health Medical and Dental, an organization empowering low-resource settings to establish low-cost, sustainable solutions for care, teamed up with Butterfly Network to use the latter’s portable ultrasound to help providers improve care for their patients.