Convergence Summit - Day One

Many companies are too focused on finishing a product, and missing things in regulatory and the “whole product solution” that will drive adoption.

Healthcare Unbound 2008

Proprietary IT and business models are sources of competitive advantage.

AAMI 2007 - Day Three, Afternoon

The crew from Lehigh Valley presented their experience creating a telemedicine system called aICU (advanced ICU). John Sokalsky lead off, describing how their aICU concept leverages intensivists and critical care nurses in a remote location to serve more ICU patients. The system improves outcomes and reduces costs - always good things. This system integrated their […]

Congress Contemplates Reporting of ED Boarding Statistics

According to this story in the New York Times, “More than half the doctors from New York State, New Jersey and
Connecticut who responded to a survey conducted in April by the
American College of Emergency Physicians said that boarding had
increased significantly in recent years.” Boarding is the practice of treating patients in hallways of busy Emergency […]

Hospital Uses Premise Patient Flow Application

The Syracuse Post-Standard profiles a Premise Corporation installation at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center. The story has a nice lead in that set's the stage for Premise's patient flow application:

Monitoring the flow of patients and bed availability in a
busy 431-bed hospital like St. Joseph's Hospital Health
Center, in Syracuse, is akin to managing flight traffic at
an […]

Private Equity Will Hasten Health Care's Transformation

Tony Chen at the Hospital Impact blog has a great post on the tsunami of recent deals in health care. These deals are changing the health care industry. Outsiders in the form of private equity investors and insider hospital M&A are gobbling up failing organizations or those weakened by market changes for which they have […]

ED Diversion Continues to Challenge

The California Healthcare Foundation has underwritten a study looking at ambulance diversions across the state. Findings in this phase 1 report showed that state wide emergency departments (EDs) were on divert an average of 10% in 2005. Emergency department closings to ambulances continue to confound hospital administrators. You can read about a recent survey showing […]

HIMSS Monday - New Orleans 2007

When attending these shows I feel compelled to try to decipher the “buzz,” to name the hot issues or key trends that characterize the event. This show has gotten so large and so diverse that, like the elephant and the blind men, buzz is perceived through your own perspective and interests. So, HIMSS this year […]

Final Thoughts on Optimizing Observation Patient Management

This conference was a great investment of time. (I would include a link to the event so you could see who presented and the topics, but WRG has taken down the link and does not seem to list any past events.) Without exception, the speakers were knowledgeable and informative, conveying lots of good details and […]

Day Two - Optimizing Observation Patient Management

Joe Zebrowitz MD, started the day talking about medical necessity and observation status. A big challenge to observation is the different rules for Medicare, Medicaid, and managed care - keeping all these straight is problematic. He presented that the typical attending physician doesn't really know what “observation status” really means. They care about how observation […]