My Medical Informatics Blog

Is Age Just a Number, or Will it Pose a Challenge to Widespread Health IT Adoption? | Healthcare Information Technology

2012-01-09T13:51:00.001-06:00

Interesting paper on age and adoption with a bottom line below: it’s more how one manages the workflow changes than anything else (IMO).

One particularly important part of HIT training is learning how to change one's workflow to optimize the process using technology. Understanding and documenting current processes and designing more efficient workflows is essential to integrating technology into a healthcare professional's practices. "When workflow is interrupted by technology, people get really crazy," Ms. Eichenwald-Maki says. "Workflow has to be a top priority in the planning phase and training phase." For example, Ms. Thielst says using tablets may be easier for older practitioners to adopt because it is similar to holding a clipboard and writing information during patient interviews.

Moreover, workflow training is important not just for older adults, but for clinicians of all ages. "Health IT implementations that don't fit into user workflow(s) are likely to fail, no matter the person's age," Ms. Thielst says. "Older [adults] get frustrated faster, but younger ones get frustrated as well if it's not properly planned out."

Is Age Just a Number, or Will it Pose a Challenge to Widespread Health IT Adoption? | Healthcare Information Technology

New technology can detect white coat hypertension | Healthcare IT News

2011-12-23T11:55:00.001-06:00

Well, I’d like to know how the sort out the nervous hypertension for the random ups and downs, because I certainly have the White Coat kind.

Via Healthcare IT News:New technology can detect white coat hypertension

Vistapedia

2011-12-23T11:46:00.001-06:00

A helpful wiki for VISTA users and Mumpsters. I find myself referring often.

Vistapedia

Growing Cost of Telemedicine, Telepathology, and Medical Data Transmissions Is a Budget-Buster in Oklahoma | Dark Daily

2011-12-23T11:37:00.000-06:00

Growing Cost of Telemedicine, Telepathology, and Medical Data Transmissions Is a Budget-Buster in Oklahoma | Dark Daily

Informatics ain't cheap...the cost of bandwith killing Oklahoma.

RAMI 2012 : International Workshop on Recent Advances in Medical Informatics (RAMI-2012)

2011-12-23T11:35:00.000-06:00

RAMI 2012 : International Workshop on Recent Advances in Medical Informatics (RAMI-2012)

Call for papers.....

SAS’s Ann Brown on Blogs

2011-12-22T10:45:00.001-06:00

From the SAS newsletter… guess I need to start paying more attention to this blog of mine. It’s the future.

Dear Readers,

You may have noticed that over the past few issues, I've been including more links to blog posts in the SAS Business Report. Blogs are becoming a major news source for readers like you – in fact, our data shows us that the SAS blogs and the Knowledge Exchange are two of the most rapidly growing sources of news for www.sas.com visitors. This reflects the changes that we’re seeing in the broader landscape of business communication: the shift from static to dynamic, interactive communication. Personally, I'm excited about this shift because it means more interaction with our readers – in our blogs, you have a voice.

I tell you all this because as we continue to make this shift, we will phase out the SAS Business Report over the next two months. With this change I’m looking forward to continuing to sharpen my social media skills on the Business Analytics Knowledge Exchange. I hope to hear from you there.

You can keep up with the blogs via RSS feeds, and you will find the same content in this newsletter – white papers, events, Knowledge Exchange articles, media coverage, SAS training opportunities, publishing updates and more.

I've enjoyed keeping you updated with the SAS Business Report. I hope I've helped you make connections between analytics and everyday life – to better appreciate how the field is changing the way to do business. Please feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts, and I look forward to keeping in touch.

Anna Brown
Editor, SAS Business Report

Technology to assess claims' risk of Medicare fraud | The Augusta Chronicle

2011-06-19T09:32:00.001-05:00

Technology to assess claims; risk of Medicare fraud | The Augusta Chronicle

Strange it took so long,

After creating a system similar to one already used by credit card companies to spot fraud, the federal government plans to crack down on phony Medicare payments before they are even paid.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid announced it has hired Northrop Grumman to create "predictive modeling technology" that can look at many aspects of a claim to see whether it appears legitimate, said the centers' administrator, Donald Berwick. The system would assign a risk score to claims, marking those that need closer scrutiny

Inside Surgery on the New Mammogram Guideline

2009-11-21T16:12:00.001-06:00

More on why I'm appalled with Expert Panels taking over practice in the name of reform: we'll get political medicine looking for budget fixes; and that's exactly what's happening with this latest goofy guideline. Via Inside Surgery

The federal government released new guidelines this week that recommend some startling changes in how women should be screened for breast cancer.

Current recommendations call for most women to get a baseline mammogram at the age of 40 and to get yearly screenings thereafter.

However, the 17 member panel of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (none of whom are oncologists or breast specialists) that made the recommendations now say that women who are of average risk of contracting breast cancer should begin regular, routine mammograms at the age of 50 and that yearly mammograms are not necessary. They are also recommending that women abandon the practice of self breast exams.

Should one infer then that if the panel is not recommending mammogram screening and not recommending self-exam, they are not recommending any diagnosis of breast cancer before age 50?

Sam Shem at HIS talk on Mammograms and Health Care

2009-11-20T06:03:00.004-06:00

at HIS Talk today,

Re: mammograms. An independent body, after review and analysis of eight clinical trials, comes out with EVIDENCE that mammogram screening in under-40-year-olds has little or no value. What happens? The radiologists are up in arms and the Obama administration, in the person of DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, tells patients to just keep doing what you did last year. And they want to cut costs by a billion dollars over the next decade to pay for national health insurance? If anyone really believes this country will ever control the costs of health care, they are living in a dream land!”

Interesting, too, that nobody’s paying much attention to the study that showed that electronic medical records haven’t improved outcomes or cost so far, even as the government is spending lots of money on those, too. At least EHRs have potential. In an economy where jobs are dying out, politicians don’t have the guts to make serious change since the people unhappy with health care don’t have the clout of those who like it just fine. I cited statistics here years ago saying that health care was making a staggering economy look robust because of rising costs, profits, and high employment, all unsustainable in a global economy.

I suppose the question then is how confident anyone can be the government as opposed to markets can make Health Care a sustainable sector in the economy.

Considering the Gov's placing its bets on tick-box medicine, voodoo economics on preventive med, and EHR; I'm not very confident. I think it has to do with politicians guts and lack there of. Sarah Palin maybe? She has guts.

SAS: Over the healthcare horizon

2009-06-27T08:21:00.001-05:00

Innovation, collaboration focus of 6th annual SAS Healthcare and Life Sciences Executive Conference

Some good video of John D. Halamka M.D and National Cancer Institute Director John E. Niederhuber speaking at this conference from SAS.

More on this in a bit but I'm still focused on Iran at the moment.

2009 Illinois Blogger Conference

2009-05-02T14:11:00.001-05:00

See you there....

Uwe Reinhardt: The German Model

2009-04-18T07:10:00.001-05:00

More Uwe here. This time on the German system.

The Buck Stops Here: Health Care Costs

2009-04-12T08:55:00.000-05:00

More on this post later. Nuff now to say it points to the ethical choices it will be tough for Health Care reform to get its arms around.

Bob Brewin: Army medical center successfully tests health records system

2009-04-12T08:33:00.002-05:00

From Bob Brewin's What's Brewin.

CHICAGO--The Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., has completed a successful test of personal health record systems that allowed patients to access information contained in the Defense Department's AHLTA electronic health record system. Now the pilot project will be extended to the Navy National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and a civilian hospital system serving military patients in Virginia, Madigan officials told the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference here this week.

He's been all over this.

Uwe Reinhardt: Defining ‘Health Care Reform’

2009-04-12T08:21:00.002-05:00

Reinhardt brings his usual clarity to the dismal science. This time on Health Care Reform,

As a vertical economist, however, I naturally think of health care as just another economic sector with the following distinct facets:

1. a demand side (by which I mean patients or their agents, private and public health insurers, who procure health care and pay for that care)

2. a supply side (the providers of health care and of health care products)

3. a health-insurance system, intended to protect individuals and households from excessive financial loss due to medical bills, and also to help patients procure health care at negotiated prices

4. an information infrastructure supporting and linking patients, insurers and providers of care with one another, and

5. a regulatory infrastructure intended to keep transactions in this market honorable, fair to both sides, and oriented toward the ultimate social goals of a health system.

Ambitious as he is, the president would like to reform all of these facets of the health sector.

Read all of him.

More EHR

2009-04-12T08:08:00.002-05:00

UPDATE 1-New military electronic records to be model for US includes the helpful paragraph chock full of links.

The White House did not say whether a commercial company would help design the electronic medical record system.

There are many that design such systems, including Cerner Corp (CERN.O), Eclipsys Corp (ECLP.O), Global Med Technologies Inc (GLOB.OB), Quality Systems Inc (QSII.O) and Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc (MDRX.O), IBM (IBM.N), General Electric Co (GE.N), Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE) and McKesson Corp (MCK.N).

Wal-Mart Inc's (WMT.N), Sam's Club unit is offering individual doctors a package including software and Dell (DELL.O) computers.
Experts say any national system would have to connect easily to other systems while protecting privacy.

...and now we know the vendors we'll be investing in.

Geek Doctor

2009-04-12T08:05:00.001-05:00

Added a new informatics blog: Geek Doctor. He has a nice post on the elements of an EHR.

Helps to know what we're going to be investing a bundle into.

Tony Blankley: Daschle-Obama Health Care Possibilities

2008-11-30T08:41:00.001-06:00

TB's column on Daschle's book.

What followed is my favorite line in the book: "When the test revealed a narrowing of the artery, however slight, cardiologists couldn't resist doing something about it." Imagine a doctor trying to cure his patient.

Cardiologists may have thought they were carrying out their responsibilities. But under the Daschle(/Obama?) plan, political hacks appointed to the Health board will decide whether your cardiologist is allowed to image your arteries and, if they find blockage, try to treat it successfully.

But that is not all he doesn't like about private-sector health care. On Page 174, he points out the dangers of letting drug companies advertise their products to the public: The public may want the drugs even if some Washington bureaucrat likes another drug instead.

He believes that Americans are not entitled to just any care that might do some good. Yep, Page 122: "Many patients with insurance want any care that might do some good, and plenty of doctors will oblige them."

Max Baucus: Call to Action Health Reform 2009

2008-11-12T19:47:00.003-06:00

Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus’s Call to Action Health Reform 2009 Baucus's Call asserts this on page 16,

Large employers — especially firms paying high wages — have the greatest capability to provide coverage to their employees. The vast majority of American employers in this category would probably continue to provide coverage as a competitive benefit to recruit employees. If these employers choose not to provide coverage, under the Baucus plan they would have to contribute to a fund that would help to cover those who remained uninsured.

I'm not optimistic large employers will find competitive benefits offering coverage. Just like post-invasion Iraq, the Senators may want to contemplate some other scenarios should the probables in this call not pan out.

Physcians as Theocrats

2007-01-01T12:01:00.000-06:00

Nick Cohen on British GPs. So much for MD accountablity and performance measures.

For instance, it feels almost blasphemous to criticise doctors. With the decline of religion, they have replaced the clergy as confessors and comforters. The media still treat them as the protectors of the NHS’s soul, even though the money they are sucking out of the service has put at risk the future of health care free at the point of delivery. British GPs are now the best paid in Europe. Their average annual income is £106,000, while a few are making £250,000.

As ‘Dr Crippen’, the anonymous author of the NHS Blog Doctor site, put it: ‘The really high-achieving entrepreneurial GPs do not waste time seeing patients. They employ others to do that… the extra money has been earned by hitting government targets [which] have little to do with health care, but a lot to do with “process” and bogus but quantifiable “healthcare achievements”.’

The Department of Health’s blundering has overpaid GPs by £300m a year, about half the current deficit of the NHS. A scandal? Not if you read a medical press that defends the phenomenal rise of GPs’ salaries as furiously as the Daily Telegraph defends Goldman Sachs bonuses. When Nicholas Timmins of the FT wrote a mild piece for the British Medical Journal that politely asked whether GPs deserved their pay rise, furious correspondents thundered that CEOs got huge salaries, so why shouldn’t they.

Michael Hugos interviews Dr. David Liebovitz

2006-11-26T09:25:00.000-06:00

Michael Hugos interviews Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation's Chief Medical Informatics Officer: Dr. David Liebovitz.

Liebovitz is faculity on Northwestern's online Medical Informatics Master degree program.