Quality & Outcomes

The current shift in the healthcare industry to digitize care unquestionably is the biggest shakeup in the history of medicine, according to cardiologist Eric Topol, a professor of genomics at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and author of "The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care." Still, Topol says, the industry has a ways to go before it will be able to shake its "slow moving" reputation; the public, he adds, will be key to driving that change. Part 1   Part 2

Rush University Medical Center counts on predictive analytics for a number of quality and efficiency improvement efforts--from reducing readmissions to treating patients at risk for stroke and cardiac arrest quickly and efficiently to reducing wait times, diversions and boarding in the emergency department. Rush's CMIO, Julio Silva, M.D., will talk about these programs and share results at an executive breakfast  panel  discussion, on Wed. March 6, during the HIMSS 2013 annual conference in New Orleans. In the meantime, we caught up with Lac Tran, Rush's CIO, (left) to get a sneak peek of how RUMC is using predictive analytics to improve care for patients at risk for stroke and cardiac arrest and to improve efficiency and throughput in the ED.

Electronic prescribing through computerized physician order entry averted 17.4 million medication errors in the U.S. in a single year, according to researchers publishing in the Journal American Medical Informatics Association .

Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that hospitals are making headway in reducing healthcare-associated infections, a new study finds that for those on the front lines, their organizations' technology doesn't support them in their jobs. In fact, according to researchers, hospital-based infection preventionists often unaware of whether their organization was involved in an HIE.

The safety of electronic health records, imaging technology and alarms all are seen as significant issues that should be top of mind for healthcare executives in 2013, according to a new report unveiled this week by the ECRI Institute.

The HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association issued a statement this week in support of the recently released Bipartisan Policy Center report on patient safety, noting that patient safety is a "shared responsibility of all stakeholders."