Healthcare IT News - June 2008 - (Page 8)

8 Healthcare IT News MY tWo CentS ■ June 2008 www.HealthcareITNews.com Patient safety, privacy must be re-examined I to bring attention to two top healthcare It issues in recent months – privacy and patient safety. First, there was that unauthorized peek at George clooney’s medical records at Pallisades medical center in new Jersey, where clooney was admitted after a motorcycle accident. employees also snooped into Britney Spears medical records after the pop star was admitted at the UcLa medical center. actor Dennis Quaid brought the spotlight on a life-and-death issue after his twin babies were mistakenly given a drug overdose (a thousand times the recommended dose of heparin, a blood thinner) at cedars Sinai medical center in Los angeles. Privacy and patient safety are two of several major challenges hospitals face today – two that can be helped by technology. most hospitals have processes, rules and technology in place to counter privacy breaches. yet infringements seem rampant. medical errors are out of control, too. an april report by healthcare ratings organization HealthGrades pegged the number of potentially preventable deaths due to medical errors from 2004 through 2006 at 238,337. Patient safety incidents cost the medicare program $8.8 billion, according to the study. Similar reports are published year after year. and, year after year, the numbers barely budge. It’s a sad refrain. the time to take action on the critical concerns of privacy and patient safety is now. there are some software solutions. many hospitals have implemented security technology to help prevent staff members who should not have access to certain patients’ medical records from gaining access. While the technology helps, it’s evident from the recent most publicized breaches, that It alone is not a fail-proof measure. It is, however, effective in providing an auditing trail. along with technology controls, hospital executives must set privacy standards high for their employees and make sure that everyone understands the expectations and the consequences of violations. t haS taKen SoMe StaR PoweR a “2008 HImSS analytics report: Security of Patient Data” on hospital security policies reveals a “significant blind spot” when it comes to hospitals’ capability of keeping patient data Bernie Monegain, Editor secure. and, another report from the american Health Information management association cautions that inadequate employee training may have contributed to the recent breaches of celebrity records. Get rid of the blind spot. re-assess the privacy standards and employee training regarding them. this is even more important for academic medical centers where, as associate editor richard Pizzi reports in a Page 13 story, academic centers have even more of a challenge when it comes to maintaining privacy. on the patient safety front, again technology can help. there is technology, for instance, that automates the tracking of surgical instruments to reduce the likelihood that one will www.HealthcareITNews.com Published in partnership with Again, technology alone is not the answer, but it’s a critical part of it. remain in the patient post surgery. and, associate editor molly merrill writes on Page 1 about the bar code technology St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson, miss., implemented to reduce medication errors. at the 535-bed St. Dominic’s, the hospital’s board of directors called for improved patient safety and supported their executives’ decision – and cost – to roll out bar coding. again, technology alone is not the answer, but it’s a critical piece of it. as Quaid said, “they have a bar code system in every checkout stand of every supermarket in the country. How could it be so complicated, and so expensive?” Well, yes, as merrill reports, it can be complicated – and expensive – for hospitals. But surely there are ways to overcome the complexity and the cost. otherwise the death toll will just continue to climb. ■ MorE at healthcareITnews.com e connect: MoNEGaIN 0608 71 Pineland Drive, Suite 203 New Gloucester, ME 04260 T (207) 688-6270 F (207) 688-6273 Neil Rouda neil.rouda@medtechpublishing.com MedTech Publishing Company PUBLISHER EDITORIAL Jack Beaudoin, Editorial Director jack.beaudoin@medtechpublishing.com Patty Enrado, Contributing Editor patty.enrado@medtechpublishing.com Diana Manos, Senior Editor diana.manos@medtechpublishing.com Molly Merrill, Associate Editor molly.merrill@medtechpublishing.com Bernie Monegain, Editor bernie.monegain@medtechpublishing.com Richard Pizzi, Associate Editor richard.pizzi@medtechpublishing.com Eric Wicklund, Managing Editor eric.wicklund@medtechpublishing.com Nancy Vitucci, nvitucci@himss.org For advertising contacts, see page 37 or visit http://www.healthcareitnews.com/ page.cms?pageId=3 Karen Diekmann, Production Manager karen.diekmann@medtechpublishing.com EDITOR, HIMSS INSIDER EDITORIAL STAFF ● ADVERTISING PRODUCTION MARKETING Danielle Hartley, Director, Marketing danielle.hartley@medtechpublishing.com Nicole Carter, Manager, Audience Development nicole.carter@medtechpublishing.com Jenna Perez, Coordinator, Marketing/Circulation jenna.perez@medtechpublishing.com READER SERVICES T (978) 671-0449 Email: cs-hitn@e-circ.net F (978)671-0460 Online: www.myHITN.com P.O. Box 9369, Lowell, MA 01853 The YGS Group T (717) 399-1900, ext. 139 HITN@theygsgroup.com John Glaser, vice president, CIO, Partners HealthCare, Boston Denni McColm, CIO, Citizens Memorial Healthcare, Bolivar, Mo. Jane Olds, COO, Louisiana Health Network, New Orleans Wes Rishel, vice president, Gartner, Inc. William Spooner, senior vice president, CIO, Sharp Healthcare, San Diego Paul Tang, vice president, CMIO, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, California Steven Waldren, director, Center for Health IT, American Academy of Family Physicians REPRINTS CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL BOARD United States could learn from Canadian information system Case’s opinions have little basis in fact ’M wRitinG to eXPReSS my disagreement with Steve case’s remarks about consumers and HIt adoption. I understand mr. case’s views on this point, but he’s offering opinions that have little basis in fact. as I point out in my upcoming book, on consumers and healthcare it’s important to note that the average consumer in the United States has a high school education, lives paycheck to paycheck and stands a significant chance (30 percent to 50 percent) of being health illiterate, health innumerate, or both. the average consumer of healthcare tends to be over the age of 65 and is about twice as likely to not have even finished high school. While about 60 percent to 70 percent of the total US population could be classified as computer users at some level, these percentages drop off very considerably for that the canadian model should serve as a model for the United States. It is ridiculous that in such a technologically advanced place like the U.S. that there is not an affordable information system that can reduce healthcare associated errors and cost. there are many cIS systems available to U.S. healthcare organizations, but there is not one that can unite the healthcare systems throughout the U.S. and, the government is apparently not interested enough in patient safety to subsidize these applications for widespread use. once again, the United States can sit back and let other countries out-develop systems to improve public safety. ceRtainLY thinK I I Amelia Davis, RN Director of Nursing CrossRidge Community Hospital healthcare’s “power users.” Less than one in three senior citizens uses the Internet or is involved with what most of us would call modern information technology. While these percentages will increase over the next few years, no dramatic run up in user is likely, nor is the health literacy problem likely to get better anytime soon. this is not the engine to drive HIt adoption. the other significant problem comes from the “supply side” of healthcare. We have very little reliable information on medical quality (a term even experts have trouble defining). outside of fully integrated systems like Kaiser, there is essentially no good quality information to be had by anyone. While health plans bundle up their claims information and offer it to consumers, this data is worse than useless when it comes to measuring medical expertise. as one prominent U.S. physician said, using claims data to measure medical care is leTTers see page 9 Neil Rouda Jack Beaudoin, John D. Payne Neil Rouda VICE PRESIDENTS PRESIDENT VICE PRESIDENTS PRESIDENT Jack Beaudoin John D. Payne 2005 JESSE NEAL AWARD WINNER www.HealthcareITNews.com www.HealthcareITNews.com healthcareITnews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/ www.myHITN.com

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