A picture really is worth a thousand words. Taking complex ideas or data and compiling them in a single picture conveys the meaning more effectively than any words. Visual communication is still one of the most effective and powerful forms of communication. When applied in healthcare, it presents a clearer picture, increases patient safety, facilitates communication between providers, prioritizes workflow, and improves patient satisfaction.

It's quite common for patients to move throughout their community seeing numerous physicians as part of their treatment plan. Connecting these provider practices with the hospital HIS system for seamless data exchange can prove to be challenging. 

Think of it as insurance. You dislike having to pay for it, but it is a critical need in any organization. You can be ready for planned downtimes, but what happens when it is unplanned?

As sited in HealthIT.gov about EHR downtimes, “Such unavailability can introduce substantial safety risks to organizations that have not adequately prepared. Effective contingency planning addresses the causes and consequences of EHR unavailability, and involves processes and preparations that can minimize the frequency and impact of such events, ensuring continuity of care."

When discussing Meaningful Use with CIOs, I’ve received some comments that they pursued specific measures to meet the requirement, but they believe they’re not taking full advantage of the measure in their real-world, day-to-day workflow. 

As the Manager of Patient Care Device Integration at Iatric Systems, hospital staff often ask me “With my tight IT budget and so many competing initiatives, how can I justify the spend for smart pump interoperability?” Recently, I came across an interesting article by HCA IT&S Division Director Application Development, Sean Albert, Five Reasons to Implement IV Pump Interoperability. This article discusses value justification for Smart Pump EHR Interoperability.

National Nurses Week was celebrated this month and it was great to see the support of and celebration of all the great nurses who make a difference for patients and families every day. If you’ve ever been a patient in a medical setting, I’m sure you would agree that nurses truly are the heart and soul of the medical community that keeps everything moving.

One way that I can think of to honor and support our great nurses is to provide ways to make their jobs easier. I have spoken with a lot of clinicians who tell me they wish they could spend more time on the patient care part of their job, and less time on record keeping and the manual entry of data, especially when it comes to medical devices.

The Two Tales of Remote Access Security: Protection from Hackers, and Meeting Regulatory Requirements.

It’s all over the news - a new healthcare breach here, a new healthcare IT study there, that talks about how healthcare IT security needs to be a focus in 2019. Yet, we are already seeing more breaches in 2019 than ever before.

All hospitals know that they need to have some form of security plan in place to protect patients and their information. The problem is that the changing requirements and increase in breaches means that this plan has to always be evolving. Hospitals likely have goals for what they would like to change in the future to make sure they are adapting to the ever-changing threat landscape.

I recently posted about Ten Best Practices to Mitigate Cybersecurity Threats that came from recommendations by the Health and Human Services publication, “Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices: Managing Threats and Protecting Patients.” That document addresses five cyber threats, with ten best practices for small to large healthcare organizations.