HealthyData Blog
In healthcare, there are so many regulations and technologies to stay current on. In our HealthyData blog, you will read everything from CMS meaningful use to EMR news, clinical best practices and QAPI program initiatives.
It’s had to find good news in the report published by Protenus Breach Barometer. Their research says there were, on average, one significant protected health information breach per day during the month of January 2017. As a company that helps prevent criminal acquisition of data, I can say that I am not surprised. If you are sensitive to the issue, you’ll regularly see this kind of news.
So, you're thinking of migrating to Epic's solid organ transplant module Phoenix? Or did you recently switch? The Phoenix product has come a long way since its initial release around 10 years ago. It is a great way to effectively manage your transplant population within the fully-integrated Epic suite of products. I helped to support the first 40 or so Phoenix go-lives during my Epic tenure and take great pride in the application.
Ahhh, the age old question. Can (or should) tasks that humans can do very well, but perhaps not very efficiently, be automated with technology? While the views on this topic would vary greatly from an abstraction service provider to a low-budget medical research project manager, there are perhaps a few things that could be defined to help one decide what is best for their particular medical record abstraction situation. Consider these ideas:
I have recently talked with a few healthcare executives. They, like everyone else I know, are careful about what they say about the effect a Trump presidency will have on healthcare. This could be that they are being politically correct but it’s possible they don’t know what Trump is actually going to do. It is clear Trump’s pre-election rhetoric has softened in many areas. Only time will tell what his real intentions are.
A few weeks ago, my colleague started the discussion on signs that you need a more automated way to get valuable information out of a document, 4 Signs You Need an Advanced OCR Solution. People turn to OCR to convert text from a fax, scanned document, or PDF into raw text that can be used more readily. Companies like ours put an intelligent layer over that OCR process and automate the extraction, pre-validation and structuring of that data so that it becomes even more useful more quickly and in a more automated way.
Let’s be honest. We could all use an extra hour in the day. Or two… or three… or even just 30 minutes!
In working with labs we have found one of the biggest pain points is the inability to find the time to scan or fax in lab results and manually enter the data into the EMR. This is an enormous issue, considering if these results aren’t entered into the EMR quickly and accurately, someone’s life could be in harm’s way.
They are systematically gathering data about all of us. No bit of data is too small because it could be a critical piece of the puzzle that connects all of the seemingly unimportant information they’ve already collected on you. Imagine creating a digital picture of you, one pixel at a time. Get it? No wait, they’ve got it.
As with every study, the article laid out the limitations of this particular study, which focused on blood pressure only, before getting into the detailed results of their work. The seven limitations they named were quite typical, including possible duplicate data and possible non-reporting of improved patients, but the limitation that seemed most unnecessary and raised my blood pressure indeed was, “Sixth, incentive program CQM reporting was based only on the data available in the EHR system of the health care provider. If a patient transitioned to another provider, such as a specialist, the original EHR might not have subsequent, possibly improved, blood pressure values recorded.”
In our first three blogs of this series, we discussed how educational outreach can lead to opportunities to facilitate more effective patient care locally and strengthen relationships with referring providers. We have focused on the structure of these efforts; now we will focus on the provision of these services and how to differentiate your efforts from others to ensure your investment pays dividends.
If you're like me, you see your physician regularly for your annual exam. When you reach a certain age, man or woman, one needs to consider routine screenings for cancer. I reached a milestone age for one of those routine screenings this year. You know, the one where you stay home so you can be prepared for a quick run to bathroom. Don't worry, I won’t go into details, but I’m grateful to say that I’m good for another 10 years. The one thing that amazed me during my outpatient visit, other than the kindness from the nursing staff, was now much paper remains in an ambulatory/outpatient setting.
