CDC Publishes Latest Emergency Department Summar for 2005
FierceHealthIT notes a new CDC study on ED overcrowding – it's getting worse.
Emergency department visits hit a new high in 2005, with more than
115 million visits, says new research from the CDC. That's a jump of
five million visits over the previous year, and a substantial 20
percent increase over 10 years.
Over the same time period, the number of hospital EDs decreased more
than 9 percent from 4,176 to 3,795, the CDC says. More than half of
these patients (62.8 percent) were referred to a physician or clinic
for follow-up after their visit, suggesting their needs weren't
critical.
The 32 page report is fuel for the American College of Emergency Physicians lobbying efforts to get congress to, “create a commission to study the ED overcrowding problem. Under the
terms of the ACEP-backed bill, hospitals would have to report to HHS on
how many patients are boarded in the ED, and how long they're boarded.” [Patient "boarding" is the practice of placing patients in hallways, usually in the ED, where they wait for an inpatient room to become available. Patients commonly wait for hours, and sometimes more than a day, on a stretcher parked in a hallway.]
Ambulance diversion data is tracked by hospitals, regional and state hospital associations, and sometimes the state. This data is not available to the public or most state health agencies. Given how bad ED diversion is, I'm not surprised hospitals want to keep this data private – especially the worst offenders. Data on patient boarding is tracked less often by hospitals and to my knowledge, is not tracked across hospitals by associations.
Public reporting of both diversions and boarding would provide an important customer service metric and patient safety indicator and should be available to prospective patients. It is too bad that such a requirement must be forced on the industry by government.
You can download your own copy of the CDC report here (pdf).
More Hospitals Lift Cell Phone Bans
According to a survey by CHIME, more hospitals are reducing restrictions on cell phones.
Twenty-three percent of the 185 survey respondents reported their organization has lifted all restrictions on mobile phone use, up 5.5% from a similar survey conducted by the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based organization in 2004. Only 11 respondents, or 6%, indicated that cell phone use is entirely
prohibited at their hospitals.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents reported mobile phone use is restricted only in certain areas, such as the emergency department or intensive care unit. And 39% indicated their organization has or will install technology to enhance cell phone signals.
Respondents, however, also reported that some problems have arisen as a result of increased use of mobile phones in their hospitals. For example, some say privacy and noise pollution concerns are compelling them to continue some mobile phone restrictions. Further, some respondents indicated their organization has specific bans on camera phones in patient areas.
As I noted on the Biomed Listserv this week, RF interference is a fact of life and cell phones are but one contributor. Regarding RF interference risk, cell phone’s will never be proven to be perfectly safe – but then neither will hair dryers, florescent light ballasts, microwaves ovens, and elevator motors. The key is risk management.
Sadly there’s no link to the actual report on CHIME’s web site. (You’d think they could have found a corporate sponsor for the study, and then published it in support of their advocacy for effective use of IT in health care and as a service to the industry – that is why CHIME exists, isn’t it?)
GE Healthcare Launches Blogs
With little fanfare, GE Healthcare has launched a suite of blogs as part of a new campaign called PeerVision. Initially targeting the diagnostic imaging market, PeerVision could easily be expanded to include other health care market segments. Included in the site are a few blogs, a discussion forum, and the usual marketing materials.
Most medical device vendors are pretty old school, and consider things like blogs or discussion forums with distrust. The usual excuse is that as an FDA regulated vendor, everything on their web site is considered “labeling.” This is not really true, but it makes a good excuse. GE has overcome this objection with a pretty comprehensive disclaimer acknowledgment that users must accept before accessing the rest of the site. The disclaimer is pretty reasonable, but one part struck me:
consultant or have any other financial interests in the information you
provide to this site including, but not limited to the promotion of
“off-label” product uses or the disclosure of confidential or
proprietary information.
I'm a consultant and clients pay me, so does this mean I can't access the site? My interpretation of this is that if another vendor can't pay a consultant to leave forum posts or blog post comments that represent that vendor's interests. Of course the wording bars the consultant from doing this rather than trying to bar another vendor.
Time will tell whether GE's blogging and forum efforts are successful. There are many things GE can do to ensure adoption and it will be interesting to see if they do any of them and how well they work. The guest bloggers have only written a few posts, and the only posts in the forum are by the moderator. I don't recognize any of the bloggers from other sites, so they may be newbies.
From the Government Health IT story on blogs:
like the first wave of Web sites,” said David Ritter, chairman of the
Labor and Employment Practice Group of the Chicago-based law firm Neal
Gerber Eisenberg, which advises companies on social media practices.
“The health care industry will catch up. But it has to stop being
hesitant about dipping a toe into the social media area.”
As an aside, the folks at Windover Information have a nice blog called In Vivo. Check it out.
New HIT Implementation Testing and Support Web Site Launched by NIST
The feds have launched a new web site, “help vendors test products to determine if they meet the required
standards for participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network.” You can visit the site here. The site will provide HIT vendors with access to the tools and resources needed
to ensure their systems properly support evolving standards for health
information systems and interoperability.
[Hat tip: iHealthBeat]
Blogs Are Here to Stay
Government Health IT ran a story on the growing impact of blogs on the health care industry. “Estimates differ on the number of people using
such tools to find health information. But if blogs are any indicator,
the health care industry — often accused of lagging behind the rest of
the business world — may now be in the forefront in the use of
information technology.” In addition to blogs written by patients and physicians on health and medicine, numerous sites have sprung up that focus on the business and technology sides of health care. (Emphasis mine below.)
professional interests. Not surprisingly, some of the earliest health
care blogs meld IT with health care content. Examples include the
Healthcare IT Guy, HIStalk, Medical Connectivity Consulting and
HITSphere, an aggregator of other health IT blogs.
You can find all of the blogs mentioned above in the Blogroll in the left hand column of this web page. A common feature on blogs, a blogroll is a listing of recommended blogs.
Blogs are proving to be important marketing vehicles in the business of health care:
written by skilled consultants whose viewpoints were not accessible
before,” said Matthew Holt, a researcher who worked with health care
companies before launching his own consulting practice and the Health
Care Blog.
“Health care is a major political issue, and the
informed commentary of blogs will ultimately impact mainstream
thinking,” Holt said. “Blogs create a bridge between academics and
health services and spill marketplace knowledge back into the health
care community.”
For a good sampling of health care blogs, check out the Healthcare 100 listing of the world's top blogs on health care and medicine. General health related blogs are over represented on this list because of their broad appeal. There are many excellent blogs that are more narrow in scope that may never reach “top 100″ status. You can find some of those blogs in my Blogroll on the right.
