Software vendor TeleTracking Technologies and the American College of Emergency Physicians commissioned a survey last month on the state of patient flow in North American hospitals (press release - pdf). The survey is based on interviews with managers, directors and executives, representing over 200 hospitals.
Virtually all the hospitals who participated in the survey felt that […]
The Chicago Fire Department is testing a system developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Given the cute acronym F.I.R.E. for Fire Information and Rescue Equipment, the system tracks fire fighters throughout a burning building. The FIRE project has a web site here.
The FIRE system, which the Chicago Fire Department began testing in the
spring, consists […]
A patient in the Vista Medical Center (Lake County, IL) emergency department waiting room died of a heart attack while waiting to be seen. The patient reportedly presented with shortness of breath and chest pain, was briefly triaged, and expired some time during a subsequent 2 hour wait to be seen by physicians.
In a startling […]
Medical Care, the journal of the American Public Health Association published a paper this month on the incremental cost to treat non-urgent outpatients in an emergency department setting versus an outpatient clinic. Using California hospital data submitted to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) between 1990 and 1998 the data were used […]
Last week two separate mass casualty exercises were held in San Diego county. At UC San Diego, police, firefighters,
paramedics, SWAT teams and others were called to a simulated terrorist
attack at an academic building. There were numerous injuries, a
chemical spill and a struggle to retake the building. Near Lindbergh Field, a simulated global pandemic was overtaking […]
One of the challenges of mass casualty situations is the lack of an aggregate view of casualties. Hospitals have difficulty determining the number of victims they must prepare to receive, and without a disaster-wide view of patients it's hard to get properly triaged patients to the most appropriate facility in the right proportions. The St. […]
Entree Wireless has packaged the Kyocera mobile router (previous post here) in a rugged, self-contained battery/charger/equipment package to provide a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.
The WBP-KR1
enclosure provides an internal plate for mounting a Kyocera KR1 EVDO/Wi-Fi
router, […]
The Office of Civil Rights in the HHS has created a tool for emergency response planners to help determine how to do their job and comply with the HIPAA privacy rule. The decision support tool walks you through a series of questions to determine when and how individually identifiable health information can be released. Here's […]
After considering the outcomes from Katrina, JCAHO has drafted a new standard to test hospital's emergency responses. These changes are based on numerous trips to the devastated areas to look at initial responses, and to assist with reopening facilities. The lessons learned on the potential impacts that disaster situations can have on local health care […]
According to this story, systems integrator NetXperts has developed a satellite based communications system called Remote CLOUD to bring hospital communications back online in the event of a disaster that renders local phone or Internet communications inoperable.
Disaster planners, businesses and hospitals are interested because
the device enables its small command and control keyboard to use the
satellite […]
