Telehealth
The hours-long wait in the emergency department is the standard of almost any hospital horror story – for the hospital as well as the patient. It’s frustrating for the patient who wants to be treated, and for the hospital administrator who wants to provide quality care and ensure a good rapport with the community.
– During the Premier Breakthroughs conference on June 15, representatives from Providence Health & Services detailed the benefits of installing a collaborative perinatal wide area network (WAN) to connect the system’s five hospitals in southern California.
Regional Health in South Dakota advocates standardized electronic charting system as a means to improve care coordination while reducing legal risks.
Blogging, tweeting, texting and facebooking have become routine for many physicians as well as many other healthcare professionals. In this issue, Associate Editor Molly Merrill talks to docs who connect with their patients, colleagues and the public via social media (Cover story and P. 23). She discovers, what she already knew, social platforms aren’t just for idle banter.
Innovative tools and data that federal health agencies have released to the public can help healthcare providers meet meaningful use of electronic health records, says Todd Park, chief technology officer for the Department of Heath and Human Services. Speaking to an audience at the Government Health IT Conference on June 15, Park offered several examples.
Natural disasters are hitting the U.S. and abroad more often, it seems. In an attempt to connect after disasters hit, family, friends, rescuers, relief agencies, healthcare workers and others have turned to social media – which one expert says is the right tool for the job.
Unified communications (UC), which has become a hot issue among IT leaders and administrators, has recently been bolstered by video – and the "prognosis for its use in healthcare appears to hold promise," says one expert.
Virtua, the largest comprehensive healthcare system in Southern New Jersey, announced Wednesday it is offering a free online personal health record – one that its founder calls a "hybrid PHR" – to consumers living in the three counties that it serves.
Can meaningful use really be condensed into an elementary school exercise? Perhaps not in reality, but it works as an effective analogy for achieving success, says one interoperability specialist.
Knowledge is power, and Highmark – one of the largest Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in the country – is launching a new wellness initiative with Navigenics that works with genetic knowledge to improve individual health.