Quality and Safety

The Department of Veterans Affairs has tapped HP Enterprise Services and Intelligent InSites for a $543 million contract to deploy real-time locating system technology in VA medical centers nationwide.

Healthcare reform, accountable care organizations, readmissions and reimbursement rates are just a few of the challenges facing today's healthcare leaders, according to a new report from ECRI Institute, a non-profit evidence-based practice center.

Everyone likes a good competition, particularly with a potential $9 million gold carrot available to the victors. On Jan. 9, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced a challenge for software developers to create a new medical scheduling system for VA's nationwide health system.

With numerous electronic health record systems continuing to fall short of providers' expectations, a report by Black Book Rankings suggests that 2013 may indeed be the "year of the great EHR vendor switch."

Already this year, healthcare providers have launched 106 new accountable care organizations (ACOs) that will reach as many as four million beneficiaries, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Jan. 10.

Computer mistakes like the one that produced incorrect prescriptions for thousands of Rhode Island patients are probably far more common and dangerous than the Obama administration wants you to believe, says Drexel University's Scot Silverstein, MD.

At the National Health Policy Conference in Washington this past week, officials from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the National Institute of Standards and Technology made the case that EHRs must be usable -- and useful -- lest the huge investments in them be wasted.

U.S. doctors' use of health IT has been sharply increasing, up from 46 percent who used an EMR in their practice in 2009 to 69 percent in 2012, according to a survey of nearly 9,800 primary care physicians representing 11 nations. The Commonwealth Fund released findings of the survey in November 2012, and expanded on several drill-down topics during an online presentation Feb. 5.

After 10 years at the helm of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), high-profile leader Carolyn Clancy, MD, will step down as director. The agency is known for its research focused on outcomes and quality of care.

Consumers aren't the only ones using mobile apps to improve their health. Their doctors are using them, too. A recent study conducted by Epocrates indicates physicians are accessing drug information at the point of care, often through a mobile medical app, to make sure the drugs they're prescribing aren't harming their patients. That, says the San Mateo, Calif.-based developer of online reference tools, amounts to more than 27 million potentially dangerous drug interactions avoided each year.