New JCAHO Patient Safety Website Up
The Joint Commission seems to be trying to extend their franchise a bit with this new site, the Joint Commission International Center for Patient Safety. Most of the content seems to be repurposed from their main site, though.
AMA to Restrict Access to AMNews Starting June
What is now an important information source for health care news, technology and policy prepares to suffle off to oblivion.
Recently we found out that the American Medical Association decided to make their AMA News online newspaper a subscription based service. The site is bylined as “The Newspaper for America's Physicians”, but in fact it is now a Newspaper for AMA Member America's Physicians. Because the site is a publication of public policy and health issues, we feel that the AMA should keep it free and open to the public. Michael Ostrovsky, MD (Member of the AMA)
Philips' Sort of New WMTS Network Gets Big Splash
Everyone should know by now that Philips introduced a new WMTS network for their telemetry system. My first post was back in January, when Philips updated their website. I saw their new smaller telemetry units last week at AAMI/NTI and learned that Philips can currently support up to 512 devices on the network. They have plans to support up to 1,000 devices by year end.
Word is that Philip's network made a big splash at AAMI this week in Tampa. This week both Philips and Cambridge Consultants, their development parter for the network, issued press releases highlighting the network and updated telemetry system. I caught all this new PR activity via MedGadget's update, here.
All of this raises lots of interesting questions about medical device networking in hospitals, like:
- Why do hospitals need both ISM (used by smart pumps, vents and multi parameter patient monitors) and WMTS (used for telemetry), and
- Just how many wireless infrastructures hospitals will have to adopt to support data collection for EMRs, alarm notification, surveillance and remote device support across all the different types of devices found in patient care areas, and finally
- What is the real difference between mission critical networks and life critical networks, and must they be physically separate?
UPDATE: An interesting comment below (click the blue comment link) from Dave Hoglund. I agree that established vendors with large market share have every incentive to create “solutions” that lock in customers with high switching costs; this helps preserve their market share. Rumor has it that at least one of the big medical device vendors is lobbying the FCC to give WMTS more bandwidth so they can pursue this strategy.
Wide Spread Medical Errors Still Claim Lives
A study (full text $12) in JAMA pegs patient deaths due to medical errors at 98,000 per year. With a brief nod to significant improvements made in some hospitals, researchers go on to savage everyone but, well, researchers:
The researchers blame the complexity of health care systems, a lack of leadership, the reluctance of doctors to admit errors and an insurance reimbursement system that rewards errors — hospitals can bill for additional services needed when patients are injured by mistakes — but often will not pay for practices that reduce those errors.
I thought we were living in a mostly capitated world, where the vast majority of complications lose money for hospitals. Certainly improving patient flow by avoiding adverse events provides better financial results than turning a blind eye and hoping adverse events will line hospital's pockets. The hostility towards hospitals is surprising.
But “we have to turn the heat up on the hospitals,” Leape says
