EMR Vendor Launches EHR Blog
EHR and practice management system vendor Greenway Medical Technologies has launched its own blog (weblog) to provide a central location for news and updated information regarding EHR industry developments. From the press release:
It features a compilation of breaking news stories, updates and
analysis from various healthcare IT publications, news outlets and
government insiders. The blog is updated regularly and reports EHR
updates as the industry continues to work with federal and local
governments in setting interoperability and certification standards
throughout the industry. The blog also follows pending EHR bills as
they make their way through Congress, such as the “Wired for Health
Care Quality Act”, senate bill 1418, which will award grants for IT to
physicians, hospitals, other health care providers, regional health
information exchanges, and to states establishing health IT loan
programs. In addition to news from various national media outlets, the
blog provides commentary from industry insiders as well.
FDA Takes Position on Auto Idenfication of Medical Devices: No
The FDA published a white paper
written by ECRI on the automatic identification of medical devices. You
may recall calls for the FDA to require barcoding of medical devices
like was recently required for drugs (here, here and here).
Congressmen, nonprofit associations and GPOs raised a clarion call to
barcode medical devices to improve patient safety. Legislators even
directed the FDA to provide a formal response.
This white paper is the FDA's response to calls to extend automatic
identification to medical devices. There are two key problems to calls
to barcode medical devices. First, Mike Dempsey of Radianse pointed out
that mandating a technology (barcodes) would work for some medical
devices and not at all for others. Second, as ECRI points out in the
white paper there is no research demonstrating that patient safety
would benefit due to the auto identification (unlike the research
that's been done with meds). So it seems there's some work yet to be
done before the FDA feels mandatory auto identification of medical
devices is justified.
[Hat tip: Biomed Listserv and William Hyman]
Hospitals Across Flooded New Orleans Face Deteriorating Conditions
MSNBC has a great story
about the efforts hospitals are taking to care for patients in an
adverse situation. Pervasive flooding in New Orleans has cut power to
hospitals creating a need to transfer acute patients somewhere dry,
while new patients continue to come in through Emergency Departments.
hand-pumped ventilators for patients who couldn't breathe. Doctors
canoed supplies in from three nearby hospitals.
“It's like being in a Third World country. We're trying to work without
power. Everyone knows we're all in this together. We're just trying to
stay alive,” said Mitch Handrich, a registered nurse manager at the
state's biggest public hospital.
Here's a story on the hurricane Katrina's impact on area for-profit hospitals.
This reminds me of past hospital flooding in Houston.
[Hat tip: Biomed Listserv and Joe Hickman]
