Wander-Risk Patients: Best Practices for Hospitals and Assisted-Living Facilities
Wander-Risk Patients: Best Practices for Hospitals and Assisted-Living Facilities
Older adults and senior citizens with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia are at elevated risk of wandering away from their medical care facility, which poses unique challenges for the hospitals and specialized care facilities that house these patients. Wandering puts them in harm’s way; they could fall, get into an accident, become a crime victim, or suffer from exposure to the elements.
Where Are the ‘Dots’?
Remote Monitoring Showcase
Where Are the ‘Dots’?
A network is comprised of nodes, sometimes called dots, that have to be connected for the system to provide benefits.
When you design a network, you want to connect the nodes or devices—“connect the dots”—to be sure that the units that have to “talk” to one another do so efficiently. If a node drops out, due to loss of power for example, there should be a way to route the data around the blacked-out dot and maintain the network’s throughput. If a node moves out of range, you want to know where it went and why.
Standard Register and Poken Launch Touch-Enabled Products and Services for Healthcare
Sept. 19, 2011—Standard Register and Poken announced today they have joined forces to launch pokenHEALTH™, which Standard Register will market exclusively to healthcare in North America. pokenHEALTH provides interactive, touch-based tools to manage community and professional events. Using Swiss watch-industry microelectronic knowledge, pokenHEALTH runs on a unique, near-field communication-enabled ecosystem of Poken devices, smart phone apps, and tags that allow users to interact with each other and the sponsor.
Brigham and Women’s Teams Up With GNS Healthcare to Fend Off Adverse Events in Heart Patients
September 13, 2011—Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital and its Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, led by David Bates, are announcing a collaboration with GNS Healthcare to use supercomputing technology to improve patient care. Cambridge, MA-based GNS Healthcare’s computer-simulation models will be used to predict the likelihood of adverse drug events and hospital readmission in patients with congestive heart failure.
AED Failures Connected to Deaths from Cardiac Arrest
Aug. 30, 2011—A study published online last week in Annals of Emergency Medicine reports that more than 1,000 cardiac arrest deaths over 15 years were connected to the failure of automated external defibrillators (AEDs); battery failure accounted for almost one-quarter of the failures.
PharMEDium Unveils New Website with Focus on Patient Safety
Aug. 15, 2011—PharMEDium Services, LLC, market leader for customized pharmacy sterile compounding for hospital intravenous and epidural therapies, launched its new website,www.pharmedium.com, which now provides updates on drug shortages, patient safety and ready-to-use pharmacy compounding services.
ABMS Announces the Creation of a Health Care Quality and Patient Safety Award
The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the organization overseeing the certification of physician specialists in the United States, announces the creation of an award for a distinguished national leader in Health Care Quality and Patient Safety. Nominations must be submitted by Aug. 31.
HLI Launches Latest Provider Friendly Terminology Solution Upgrade
Denver, Colorado, July 26, 2011 — Health Language, Inc.® (HLI), the global leader in medical terminology management, announced that it has expanded its provider friendly technology (PFT) solution to over 120,000 terms in addition to the existing terms used by SNOMED-CT and ICD.
It’s Just Common Sense
Editor’s Notebook
It’s Just Common Sense
I recently moderated a webinar about a problem in healthcare that hadn’t occurred to me—nor to many others, it appears—but seems quite obvious now that it’s been brought to my attention. In the webinar, Dennis Tribble, chief pharmacy officer at Baxa Corporation, joined Stuart Levine of ISMP and Denise LaStoria, owner of Training Advantages, LLC, to discuss problems inherent in train-the-trainer programs used for technology training, especially in the pharmacy.
“Can’t Rather than Don’t” Saves Lives
Human Factors
“Can’t Rather than Don’t” Saves Lives
A recent article in The New York Times, “U.S. Inaction Lets Look-Alike Tubes Kill Patients,” (Harris, 2010) shows that American hospitals are 80 or more years behind manufacturing industries in basic safety. This inexcusable situation deserves zero tolerance from patients, insurers, healthcare professionals, and other healthcare stakeholders.