Weekly round-up: Flurry of activity
What strikes me while reviewing the news we’ve published this week is the sheer volume. This indicates a lot of activity on the health IT front, mostly for the good.
Although a Massachusetts eye and ear provider will pay $1.5 million to settle a HIPAA security-rule violation case and the Kentucky HIE will dissolve, more hospitals have achieved recognition by The Joint Commission as a top performer. More than 600 hospitals are top performers in quality and patient safety, up 53 percent from 405 hospitals designated as top performers last year. The designation is based on hospitals' performance during 2011 across 45 accountability measures in areas such as pneumonia care, heart failure care and inpatient psychiatric services.
Those hospitals most likely could have achieved high performance without a whole lot of effective health IT on the back end and upfront.
One of the most exciting happenings this past week was “e-patient” Richard Davies (Dave) deBronkart, Jr.’s talk at the Medicine 2.0 Congress in Boston last weekend. Listening to him speak, I was truly struck by his passion for the topic of the growing culture change of participatory medicine. His frank speech drew a lot of laughs but I think it also had a significant impact on his audience, an auditorium full of researchers and clinicians focusing their efforts on mobile health.
After surviving metastatic Stage 4 liver cancer, deBronkart quickly became a recognized patient advocate by simply advocating for his own survival. Despite many physicians’ belief that patients can’t handle the information they might find on the internet, “it’s the right of a desperate person to try to save themselves,” he said. And, he added, when patients want to get engaged in their care, “we should do everything we can to let them do so. News flash: Until people gain experience, they are inexperienced.”
Plus, deBronkart said patients should not assume that their doctor knows everything that might be useful to them. In 2010 alone, 800,000 new papers were indexed in Medline. “There’s no way for clinicians to stay up-to-date on all of the information.”
deBronkart’s experience shows that the internet makes it possible for new patients to connect to information and to each other. The need, mechanism and infrastructure is largely the same today as it was at the time of his first keynote three years ago but deBronkart said there is more recognition of the problem and awareness that “sometimes the patient brings value.”
Appealing to his audience, deBronkart told them to continue their efforts because they are doing “deeply significant work.” They should, however, “let patients help improve healthcare because this stuff matters.”
Beth Walsh
bwalsh@trimedmedia.com
Although a Massachusetts eye and ear provider will pay $1.5 million to settle a HIPAA security-rule violation case and the Kentucky HIE will dissolve, more hospitals have achieved recognition by The Joint Commission as a top performer. More than 600 hospitals are top performers in quality and patient safety, up 53 percent from 405 hospitals designated as top performers last year. The designation is based on hospitals' performance during 2011 across 45 accountability measures in areas such as pneumonia care, heart failure care and inpatient psychiatric services.
Those hospitals most likely could have achieved high performance without a whole lot of effective health IT on the back end and upfront.
One of the most exciting happenings this past week was “e-patient” Richard Davies (Dave) deBronkart, Jr.’s talk at the Medicine 2.0 Congress in Boston last weekend. Listening to him speak, I was truly struck by his passion for the topic of the growing culture change of participatory medicine. His frank speech drew a lot of laughs but I think it also had a significant impact on his audience, an auditorium full of researchers and clinicians focusing their efforts on mobile health.
After surviving metastatic Stage 4 liver cancer, deBronkart quickly became a recognized patient advocate by simply advocating for his own survival. Despite many physicians’ belief that patients can’t handle the information they might find on the internet, “it’s the right of a desperate person to try to save themselves,” he said. And, he added, when patients want to get engaged in their care, “we should do everything we can to let them do so. News flash: Until people gain experience, they are inexperienced.”
Plus, deBronkart said patients should not assume that their doctor knows everything that might be useful to them. In 2010 alone, 800,000 new papers were indexed in Medline. “There’s no way for clinicians to stay up-to-date on all of the information.”
deBronkart’s experience shows that the internet makes it possible for new patients to connect to information and to each other. The need, mechanism and infrastructure is largely the same today as it was at the time of his first keynote three years ago but deBronkart said there is more recognition of the problem and awareness that “sometimes the patient brings value.”
Appealing to his audience, deBronkart told them to continue their efforts because they are doing “deeply significant work.” They should, however, “let patients help improve healthcare because this stuff matters.”
Beth Walsh
bwalsh@trimedmedia.com
Beth Walsh,
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.