I was chatting with a group of hospital CIOs recently and we were discussing network security and what makes their networks vulnerable. I was surprised by the difficulty each was having with remote access by physician office staff. It was unanimously one of the greatest concerns. While we know they have some longstanding, awesome partnerships with physician offices, there are three main vulnerabilities that have surfaced with remote network access:

1) Unknown terminations
2) Inappropriate access discipline
3) Access after termination

It’s been a little while since our last post. Please forgive the lapse — we’ve been busy connecting medical devices to EHRs at many hospitals. And we have another Smart Pump EHR Integration implementation currently scheduled to go live in September.    

Connecting smart pumps to your EHR is a complex project, but well worth it. Doing so improves patient safety, saves your nurses time, and helps increase IV reimbursements. If you’re interested in learning more about Smart Pump EHR Integration, we’re hosting three webinars this summer on the subject, including one where Amy Speanburg, MS, RN, Clinical Informatics Specialist at Saratoga Hospital will join us as our guest speaker.

Scroll down for registration links and a description of each webinar.  

It is said that a heart attack is 80% preventable by eating well, exercising regularly, and keeping stress to a minimum*. While there is no official statistic yet, I would say that a cyber-attack is 95% preventable by vetting partners well, exercising caution, and keeping access points to a minimum. 

As I wrote in a blog post on May 3, we were honored that Sallie Arnett, CIO of Licking Memorial Health Systems, shared her hospital’s sepsis success in a live webinar which we held on May 17. If you didn’t have the opportunity to attend, here’s a link so that you can watch it on demand. And here’s an updated version of what I posted on May 3:

It's 2018, a time when there is an endless amount of information available, multiple technologies to choose from, a 24/7 news cycle, and access to any type of information, in seconds, at your fingertips. (Or, actually, without even having to use your fingertips at all — you simply have to say out loud what you want to know!)

Whether or not you plan on checking out all the latest healthcare IT trends and technologies at HIMSS18 next month in Las Vegas, I believe this is the year we may (finally) get back to real healthcare IT innovation. This is certainly true for our team at Iatric Systems, and I suspect it’s true for many others based on reasons I’ll explain below. In my opinion, it cannot come soon enough. 

It's always fun to take a quick look back at the prior year and see what was accomplished, but my favorite thing is looking ahead to the future, and prioritizing what we can do to help organizations meet their 2018 goals.

If you’re a clinician, you know that closed loop medication administration can enhance patient safety and improve efficiencies throughout the medication management process — from the time a physician orders a prescription, to the time a nurse administers the medication and documents it in the patient’s eMAR. Maybe you’ve implemented CPOE and bedside medication verification to close the loop on oral medications?

But what about IV meds? Exactly what does closed loop IV medication administration look like?

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"After years of frustrations, user wish-list turns positive." The headline from this year's EHR Satisfaction Survey suggests improvements in attitude and satisfaction toward hospital EHRs, yet the underlying challenges for CIOs and clinicians still haven't changed very much.