The One Month Milestone
Today marks the official one month birthday of this site. During that time, there have been about 600 visitors and almost 3,000 page views. The average visit length currently stands at an astounding 5 minutes and 20 seconds per visit. You can see my Site Meter here.
Thanks to everyone who's visited. I hope you've found something of value here and will spread the word.
When I started my business, I found it very difficult to find information and news about patient flow and medical connectivity. By posting here, I hope to perform a small service to you in the health care industry and generate some discussion around these important topics.
Several hospitals and companies have been making repeated visits — welcome! One company added this site to their internal Intranet; I can't think of a greater compliment for my efforts. You are all welcome to use my content non-commercially per the terms of the Creative Commons license on the left. An attribution and link to this site would be appreciated.
As Larry Springer of The Grape Choice says (as he pours during his regular wine tastings), “…it's all about commerce.” And the main reason behind this site is to spread the word about my professional services. If there is some way I can help you out, please let me know.
You can help me by providing feedback; let me know what you like (and don't like) and suggest improvements. If an entry on the site grabs you, leave a comment; tell us more, provide a correction or rebuttal.
Finally, thanks to those who have linked to my site: Mike Kauffman of the Biomedtalk listserv, Neil Versel at his Clinical IT blog, HIStalk, and Healthcare Blogs.com.
Patient Flow Bottlenecks Cause Surgery Delays
According to the BBC, the number of NHS operations cancelled at the last minute in English hospitals increased by almost 2,500 at the end of 2004. Between October to December 17,402 operations were cancelled at short notice for “non-clinical” reasons. But have no fear, a health ministry bureaucrat said, “the vast majority of patients were getting faster access to treatment.” It seems that things are getting worse, but its still okay.
The cause of this “non-problem?” A lack of available down stream beds and theatre staff shortages are the main culprits. Their current solution includes throwing more beds at the problem and some patient flow optimization by working to keep out patients out of in patient beds. Having met with a group of NHS nurse executives last summer in NYC, I know that the majority of their hospitals are highly regimented (fixed rooms for specific patient classifications) and could increase patient flow, reduce transfers and shorten LOS by adopting universal beds.
Ironically, another government program to improve service may be gumming up the works. A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association said: “The BMA is also concerned that in order to meet the four-hour A&E waiting list target inappropriate hospital admissions are being made. This would obviously lead to reduced bed capacity and elective surgery being cancelled. The BMA is looking into this.” (For you non-anglophiles, A&E is Accident & Emergency, their term for the ED.)
In another example of bureaucratic fixing, this paper on surgical waiting times in Canada’s health service has this startling conclusion: shorter surgery waiting lists result in shorting waiting times for those patients on the list. The authors suggested that, “Hospital managers may also use the findings to reduce uncertainty in reporting expected waits given the current list size, thereby improving resource planning.” In fairness, there are some interesting bits about queuing priorities and optimizing limited resources.
Emergisoft To Improve Patient Flow at St. John’s Riverside Hospital
St. John’s Riverside Hospital has selected Emergisoft’s ED patient management software. Reading between the lines, EmergisoftED was selected based on proven integration with MEDITECH, price, an in-state reference site, and a released product. The press release intimates that some competitors were proposing unreleased product.
Buying criteria aside, Emergisoft won the business mostly on the strength of its product. In business almost 15 years, they released their second generation ED app late 2002/early 2003. Sales in 2003 tripled over 2002 based on the new product release. Their web site indicates they have made sales in CA, AZ, LA, GA, RI, MI, OH, PA, NY and NJ. In July of 2004, EmergisoftED scored at the top in a KLAS ED IS report.
A Texas investment group bought out Emergisoft’s predecessor company in 2002, bringing in new management and staff. Previously a penny stock, the investors took the company private in 2003. It looks like they made a good investment.
Issues around patient flow (either in the ED or downstream) were absent from the release.
Hat Tip to HIStalk
The HIStalk guy was kind enough to allow me a guest appearance on his site. From time to time I get these health care IT wild hairs that just don't fit the patient flow focus of this site. My thanks for the occasional soap box! Visit HIStalk, there's always interesting (and funny) news.
Every vendor's worst nightmare…
HP/Agilent/Philip's lingering regulatory compliance problem.
