There is a
penalty for IT ignorance in healthcare. The management problem with IT within
healthcare is an ongoing issue that has cost healthcare millions of dollars.
Healthcare executives rely on vendor expertise instead of investing or seeking
seasoned in house IT experts who understand the interworking’s of healthcare.
The ignorance of the intricacies of biomedical technology and healthcare IT
cost healthcare millions of dollars. The importance of understanding how
medical equipment integrates with the hospital’s IT network is very important.
Biomedical Engineering does not understand the intricacies of IT and IT does
not understand the functionality medical equipment. A person that understands medical
equipment and IT can prove to be very valuable to a healthcare system. Another
problem is the troubleshooting and repair of IT based medical equipment. With
some medical equipment to startup and configure relies on it being placed on
the IT network, someone who understands what is needed is invaluable because of
the necessary components and how to work with the proper IT personnel. Another
area of importance is in the troubleshooting and repair. Vendors do not support
or are not interested in the configurations of another vendor’s equipment. In hospitals,
there is a smorgasbord of equipment that in some cases rely on communicating
with another vendor’s equipment, in this case someone that understands
integration is very important. This person would minimize the finger pointing.
The company Interactive Healthcare Designs (IHD) provides this service with over
20yrs in healthcare (in house), the experts are poised to consult in Biomedical
/ IT networks, project management and other services. The founder Dr. Jeffrey
Smoot has over 15 yrs. in Biomedical Technology and over 10 yrs. in Picture
Archiving (PACS) and specialized in Cardio-Vascular Information Systems (CVIS),
he has experience with the major vendors in Radiology, ICU monitoring and
surgical networks. Dr. Smoot is also a professor in Healthcare Informatics. To
hire consulting for bridging the gap between Biomedical/ IT and other healthcare
services contact us:
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Medical Errors in Healthcare
In the June, issue Fierce
Healthcare had an article that talked about the rise of hospital medical errors
in state was Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reported that errors were on the
rise however, the Department of Public Health states, that is good. The report
showed that 821 Serious Reportable Events (SRE) in 2014, an increase of 9 from
2013. Massachusetts officials cautioned that the increase does not indicates
that hospital are less safe but say that it is an indication of more accurate
data. Error reporting increase when a new error reporting data system was
implemented in 2013. When the National Quality Forum standards was updated in
2012 errors jumped 70 percent between 2012 to 2013. These new standards reported 290 serious
injuries or deaths from a fall in 2014, a slight increase from 2012. The number
of wrong site surgeries decreased, from 36 to 24, wrong sight surgeries and
foreign objects left behind remained relatively the same.
Mayo Clinic researchers identified
Major surgical errors used human factors analysis to identify 69 never events, including surgery on the
wrong person, the wrong site or wrong side of the body, among the 1.5 million
invasive procedures performed over 5 years, they found 628 human factors
contributed to the errors overall, roughly four to nine per event. Nearly
two-thirds of the mayo never events occurred during relatively minor procedures
such as anesthetic blocks, line placements, interventional radiology
procedures, endoscopy and other skin and soft tissue procedures. Even though
there were multiple missteps that occurred there were four major
identifiers for the potential causes,
such as stress, mental fatigue, miscommunications, unsafe actions this is where
clinicians convince themselves they are seeing what they want to see,
inadequate supervision and organizational influences.
Steps to prevent never event errors
Mayo clinic follows Joint Commission’s protocol such as briefings and huddles
before surgery, surgeons pausing before making the first incision. Surgical
teams at Mayo have also implemented World Health Organization’s recommended
safety checklist.
This problem is existing all
throughout healthcare this is just information on one hospital study. The
opportunities for error reporting software is limited and the ability to
measure different parameters of hospital medical errors is at best difficult.
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