HIT Consultant Blog: “The law [HITECH, the law gives incentives to healthcare organizations to digitize personal health information before 2020], which also updates parts of HIPAA, gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services until mid-August to define what constitutes an electronic medical record. In Schmidt’s view initial requirements should start with strong authentication and encryption, and so far, the Secretary has done just that. Citing existing NIST and FIPS standards, HHS guidance includes healthcare data at rest, data in motion, as well as the proper destruction of Protected Health Information. Unfortunately, some health practitioners have begun purchasing e-health systems before the full complement of standards is known.” – No matter how you slice it, security is always going to be a problem. Even now, security is a primary concern for any healthcare facility in the United States. As you expand outside the walls of your existing system it is only going to get worse. I agree that practitioners should slow down and wait until some of this gets worked out. There’s nothing worse than investing in a system that has to be scrapped secondary to jumping the gun.
Author: Jerry Fahrni
-
“What’d I miss?” – Week of May 25th
As usual there were a lot of things happening this week in healthcare, and not all of it was technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I browsed this week.
(more…) -
KLAS says providers are integrating pharmacy systems
Heathcareitnews.com:”One of the most striking examples of the impact of integration within the closed loop is Siemens, Hess notes. On one hand, providers who rated the Siemens Pharmacy product alone gave it a relatively low overall score of 70.8 out of 100. However, those providers who rated both Siemens Pharmacy and the Siemens bar-coding at the point of care product – Medication Administration Check (MAK) – scored the pharmacy product much higher, giving it an overall satisfaction rating of 83.9. That BPOC/pharmacy integration is one of the key reasons that Siemens Pharmacy earned the second-highest satisfaction score in the study.” -Â This was mentioned earlier in the week by Todd Eury at PTR, but I wasn’t able to get a close look at the article until now. I am a Siemens Pharmacy user and am not surprised by their low satisfaction score. The Siemens pharmacy system has a lot to be desired and their product support is seriously lacking. I am happy to see, however that the satisfaction with the system increases with MAK, which we will be implementing later this year.
-
EMRs as a tool for patient safety.
A short jaunt over to the EMR and HIPPA weblog led me to an interesting article in Time written by Scott Haig, MD. While Dr. Haig touches on a couple of positive features of electronic medical records (EMRs), he like many physicians, focuses on the negatives. He concludes that “Doctors and patients live in a world of painful, pressing questions. The great physicians I’ve known seek answers through personal commitment to each patient and judgment born of practical experience — neither of which I have found in a machine.” I think he is missing the point of an EMR.
(more…) -
Taking advantage of your carousel space.
I have posted many times on our system for barcoding medications in the pharmacy. The posts have included reference to our efforts to increase storage space.  Our goals have always been to store as many medications as possible within the carousel to take advantage of the software’s many safety features and inventory functionality. Like all pharmacy departments we have several medication items that do not require significant storage space. I am talking about items like ophthalmic drops, otic preparations, small ointments and creams and some injectable items that are stocked in small quantities secondary to expense and lack of use.Â
During installation of our carousels we noticed small gaps in the shelving units. We approached one of the White Systems engineers on site and inquired about the small gaps. I don’t recall exactly why they were there, but the small size made the space virtually useless. Fortunately for us, the Talyst consultant that was on site to help us with the installation process sat down with us to come up with a solution. It was a simple idea really, but quite ingenious.  We purchased small bins that fit perfectly into the empty spaces. The size of the bin limited their utility for storage, but worked nicely for the smaller items mentioned above. The addition of the smaller bins created several empty spaces in the larger bins, giving us significantly more storage.Â
Â
Â
Â
-
“What’d I miss?” -Week of May 18th
As usual there were a lot of things happening this week in healthcare, and not all of it was technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I browsed this week.
-
Problems with barcodes.
ISMP Medication Safety Alert! May 21, 2009 Vol. 14, Issue 10: “Please let us know if you identify problems
with  a company’s unit dose package barcode. An example of an ARICEPT (donepezil) unit-dose package with a barcode  problem appears in Figure 1 (shown in the PDF version of the newsletter). Note that the labeling material has been applied to the unit-dose package in such a way that tearing the doses apart destroys the barcode! Problems like this are due to inadequate quality control and are by no means isolated to one company. When issues like this occur, staff are forced to take extra steps to maintain the quality of the barcode, or they have to relabel products so they can be scanned at the bedside. This, of course, takes time and also increases the risk of a labeling error. If you send barcode problems to us along with a publishable photo, it will help us remind companies about the need for adequate quality control.”  – Fortunately for us we haven’t seen anything like this, yet.