Client News Coverage

Improving HCAHPS performance is a never-ending struggle for hospitals, one that has taken on greater urgency as results are linked to CMS’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program. The HCAHPS Survey is the basis of the “Patient Experience of Care Domain” under VPB, which makes up 30 percent of a facility’s total performance score.

A particularly thorny problem has been improving patient communications regarding medication, which is measured based on HCAHPS responses to three questions:

1. Before giving you any new medicine, how often did hospital staff tell you what the medicine was for?
2. Before giving you any new medicine, how often did hospital staff describe possible side effects in a way you could understand?
3. When I left the hospital, I clearly understood the purpose for taking each of my medication

HIStalk »

It’s hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t a pill—sometimes dozens of different ones—to treat so many health conditions. Today, 70% of Americans take at least one prescription drug and more than half take two, according to the Mayo Clinic.

While the healing powers of modern medicine are pretty awesome, you still need to be cautious when it comes to any drug. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that medication errors cause at least one death every day and injure 1.3 million people annually.

Health.com »

The convergence of advanced health information technologies, a greater focus on collaborative care and population health management, and a growing federal focus on initiatives driven by wide-spread information sharing has given rise to the health information exchange organization (HIO). While the benefits of HIOs are numerous and significant (e.g., point of care access to accurate patient information for improved care management and coordination; streamlined clinical workflows; enhanced organizational efficiencies), maintaining data integrity is a particularly thorny challenge.

Advance Healthcare Network »

Sometimes referred to as blood poisoning, sepsis is the body’s often-deadly response to infection. As many as 1.6 million Americans are affected by sepsis, and more than 258,000 of them die from it, every year. Yet sepsis remains not only misunderstood by the public—a recent study by Harris Poll on behalf of the Sepsis Alliance in June 2014 found that only 44 percent of Americans had even heard of sepsis—it also remains challenging for physicians and other clinicians to work with. There are a variety of reasons that sepsis remains such a huge, unmanaged problem, in hospitals and emergency departments. But there are those who are working to change the situation. And there are things that IT professionals, especially clinical informaticists, can do, to turn things around.

Healthcare Informatics »

There’s no doubt that consumers of a certain age take comfort in going to the doctor, agreeing with their diagnosis, and following his or her treatment plan to the letter without doubts or hesitation. But this paternalistic approach to healthcare is starting to erode as younger generations of patients are beginning to handle the provision of care as they do any other major purchase.

Journal of AHIMA »

A number of regulations currently govern retail pharmacy operations to ensure that each facility meets the minimum requirements for safe practice. Included in these are guidelines mandating that patients be provided with information on their prescription medications.

What is not mandated, however, is the format of that information. This gap has led to a common misperception that is negatively impacting pharmacy budgets and patient health literacy: That medication education leaflets must be provided in paper form.

Progressive Grocer »

Effective population health management begins at the point of care, where strong governance processes must be established to guide how data is collected, structured, accessed, maintained, and analyzed. Many healthcare organizations continue to struggle with creation of these policies, hampered by the sheer volume of data and the pace at which change is taking place. By Subbu Ravi, COO, Amphion Medical Solutions

Health IT Outcomes »

Terminology is core to everything in healthcare - from diagnoses to procedures to outcomes, healthcare IT systems represent clinical concepts in coded terminologies or free text. The lack of a common clinical vocabulary across disparate systems is currently a primary roadblock to the national efforts to increase interoperability, transparency and collaboration within our healthcare system.

Advance Healthcare Network »

If there is one emerging pattern within the clinical informatics field, it is the quest to make data "actionable" for users. With all the technology infrastructure development over the past decade to facilitate electronic health record installation in healthcare facilities, providers are finding that the data generated often can't be used in a timely and constructive manner.

Healthcare IT News »

Enhancing care experience and outcomes, improving population health and reducing costs is healthcare’s “Triple Aim,” a concept introduced by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to help navigate a shift in focus from “health care” to “health optimization.” When it comes to achieving these laudable objectives, anecdotal experiences and data emerging from several pilot programs led by senior living providers and Medicare managed care organizations suggest that remote monitoring technology has a crucial role to play.

Senior Housing News »

National regulatory initiatives such as Meaningful Use, Value-based Purchasing and the accountable care movement are working in tandem to raise the bar on adoption and integration of evidenced-based practices across all clinical care settings. Higher performance expectations mean that healthcare organizations must deploy strategies to standardize care delivery by providing more robust clinical decision support (CDS) at the point of care.

Government Health IT »

As the healthcare industry unwraps the next phase of population health management (PHM), providers are increasingly embracing its promise to drive success with healthcare’s triple aim of improving population health, enhancing patient experiences and reducing costs. It’s a 180-degree shift in thinking for many providers who have been conditioned to long-standing fee-for-service models, one that will require a coordinated care effort and an advanced technological infrastructure to support decision-making based on the latest industry evidence.

Electronic Health Reporter »

If you think maintaining an accurate record of who’s who across one facility is difficult, try doing it across multiple organizations.

With the Affordable Care Act granting more Americans access to health care, the demand for better patient identity technologies continues to climb. The combination of additional patients and the growth of data-sharing health information exchanges (HIEs) may lead to serious patient identification problems, including duplicate records, overlays, and other inaccuracies. Hospitals with lax processes or that fail to employ strong patient-matching algorithms can potentially tarnish data flowing through HIEs. Bad data easily can spread as information travels across different facilities and organizations.

For the Record »

Sepsis data are talking, but should the health care industry be listening?

Big Data has become a big commodity in the health care industry. The government, payers, researchers, providers, and even patients are interested in what data are trying to tell us about the quality of care provided. EHRs have allowed the complicated manipulation of these data, yet there continues to be limitations on the conclusions that can be drawn.

For the Record »

A senior population that is the fastest growing sector in the U.S. has created a booming home health industry, one that is expected to reach a value of $150.8 billion by 2018. That rapid growth has also given rise to another highly lucrative industry: reimbursement fraud.

Security Today »