Q&A: Quality, Safety, and Medical Tourism
Q&A
Quality, Safety, and Medical Tourism
After a long career as a clinician and medical informatics leader at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Syed Tirmizi, MD, grabbed his passport and joined Quantros as vice president of international business development.
Health IT & Quality
Health IT & Quality
Regulate HIT Tools as Medical Devices? Yes and No
The Food and Drug Administration recently announced it is reconsidering its previous decision to exclude health information technology (HIT) tools from regulation as medical devices. When last evaluated in the late 1990s, this decision made common sense. At that time HIT consisted of rudimentary clinical documentation systems, electronic reference materials, and administrative applications.
Florida Hospitals and Surgeons Launch Ambitious Initiative to Improve Health Care Quality
Florida hospitals and surgeons launched a significant new initiative to
improve patient safety and the quality of surgical care while reducing
costs throughout the state. The Florida Surgical Care Initiative
(FSCI), a joint initiative of the Florida Hospital Association (FHA)
and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and its Florida chapter, is
a unique statewide collaboration that will focus on reducing surgical
complications and improving the quality of care in participating
hospitals.
EDIMS Partners with Medit Corporation to Speed Access to Quality Emergency Care
information management systems, today announced it has formed a
strategic relationship with Medit Corporation that will help EDIMS’
hospital clients speed triage and treatment of their ED patients.
Froedtert & Community Health Selects Avatar for Patient Satisfaction Evaluation, Improvement Program
Froedtert & Community Health has selected Avatar International, an
industry leader in healthcare quality improvement services, to partner
in a comprehensive patient satisfaction evaluation and service delivery
optimization program.
Beyond Center Stage at HIMSS
The annual conference of the Health Information and Management Systems Society, HIMSS, is notorious for its size. This year’s event — March 1-4 in Atlanta — drew 27,855 health IT professionals, clinicians, and vendor representatives. The Exhibit Hall featured 934 companies and was packed most of the time.
Distractions and Interruptions: Impact on Nursing
Distractions and Interruptions: Impact on Nursing
Working at the point of care, nurses play a key role in the delivery of safe, quality healthcare. Acute care nurses have to make timely and relevant clinical decisions, yet work within environmental conditions that are conducive to error. A recent study showed that nurses on average were interrupted 3 to 6 times every hour by people, pagers, telephone, etc (Potter et al., 2005). The potential impact of interruptions and distractions includes medical and medication errors, ineffective delivery of care, conflict and stress among health professionals, latent failures, and poor outcomes.
Physician-led Initiative to Improve Healthcare Quality Marks 10-Year Anniversary
Celebrating its 10 year anniversary at its meeting in the nation’s
capital, the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance
Improvement (PCPI) highlighted its achievements to date and took a
proactive look at future efforts to measure and improve the quality of
patient care.
Documentation: The Clinical Integration Specialist
Documentation
The Clinical Integration Specialist: Improving Patient Care in the Energency Department
In an article posted to the Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare blog (Weygandt, 2009), we addressed a critical function for patient safety and quality: accurately communicating clinical information in real time by incorporating the clinical documentation specialist (CDS) as a key member of the clinical team.
Trends: Sentara Supports Its Commitment to High Quality Care and Patient Safety with Biomedical Device Integration
Trends
Sentara Supports Its Commitment to High Quality Care and Patient Safety with Biomedical Device Integration
Sentara is a national leader in patient safety and quality care innovation, operating in over 100 care sites in Virginia and North Carolina. Sentara is one of the most progressive and integrated healthcare organizations in the nation with a culture of safety focused on error and injury reduction through simplified rules of behavior for everyone working in the environment of care.