Healthcare IT News - October 2007 - (Page 21)

www.HealthcareITNews.com hoSpItalS & IdNs October 2007 ■ Healthcare IT News 21 eHr help on the way to Minnesota’s rural hospitals By rICHArd PIzzI, Associate Editor t Department of Health will receive a $1.6 million Health Information Technology grant from the Office of Rural Health Policy at the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The funds will help rural hospitals implement electronic health records. The MDH was one of 16 grant recipients from among about thirHE MINNESOTA ty applicants. MDH’s Office of Rural Health and Primary Care plans to distribute the funds to the Lac qui Parle Health Network to help them implement EHRs. The network consists of Johnson Memorial Hospital in Dawson, Appleton Area Health Services, and Madison Lutheran Home, all Critical Access Hospitals in Minnesota. “This funding will help us build a system for exchanging health records electronically,” said Mark Roisen, director of the Lac qui Parle Health Network. “With electronic health records, we’ll be able to provide care more efficiently and safely to our patients.” Grants were made to 15 other state rural health offices to help communities with Critical Access Hospitals exchange health information throughout the continuum of care. This allows patients to have their clinical information available to providers as they move from clinic or emergency services to the hospital to home health or nursing home care. The MDH said that federal officials concentrated significant grant funding on selected small rural communities to increase the likelihood of long-term success and to serve as models for other areas of the state and the nation. In 2004, the Minnesota e-Health Initiative began exploring ways to expand health information technology in Minnesota. Lac qui Parle used $40,000 in planning funds received under a 2006 Minnesota e-health grant program to begin a planning process to be ready to respond to the HRSA grant opportunity. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: MiNN 1007 ● deCIsIoN Continued from page 19 T h e A m e r i c a n Me d i c a l Informatics Association aims to make clinical decision support a routine part of patient care. To that end, the organization has drawn “A Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support.” The report recommends standards, suggests how to lower barriers to adoption and offers instruction for successful CDS deployment techniques. One senior resident told Borowitz she felt she was “cheating” when she used Isabel to help refine a differential diagnosis. On the other hand, he said, medical students have little trouble using Isabel. “After all, they are used to ‘Googling’ pretty much everything so this is not a reach for them – they are ‘digital natives,’ whereas most of the faculty remain ‘digital immigrants,’ and while some of us immigrants speak the digital language quite clearly, nearly all of us have at least some accent,” Borowitz said. Using Isabel is like using Google, Britto said. Like any search engine, the more detailed information that is entered into the query entry, the narrower the results. However, unlike other search boxes that have limited space, whole cases can be cutand-pasted into the query, Britto said. Isabel is also continuously updated with the latest information from journals, textbooks and other sources. Isabel technology is available on an annual subscription basis. Hospitals with 500 beds pay $180 per bed, or $90,000, for a year. Single-practice physicians pay $60 a month, and when broken down that amounts to $2 a day, Britto said. A tool on Isabel’s homepage provides an “ROI calculator” that doctors can click to compute the potential return on investment in Isabel – including avoiding malpractice cases. Isabel covers fields such as pediatrics, neonatology, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, toxicology and bioterrorism. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: DecisioN 1007 Listening. Understanding your needs. It’s how we’ve become a world leader in speech recognition for clinical documentation. Our exceptionally accurate product, SpeechQ for RadiologyTM, sets a new level of excellence in speech recognition. Finally, a speech recognition tool that lives up to radiologists’ expectations of working fast, accurately and efficiently. Visit www.medquist.com. And be inspired. e ● Connect: MeDqUist 1007 ● ©2007 MedQuist IP Corporation. MedQuist is a registered trademark of MedQuist IP Corporation. All rights reserved. http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7842 http://www.medquist.com http://www.medquist.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=7900 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7837

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Healthcare IT News - October 2007 Contents Global Harmony Telegrowth New Rules Keeping Tabs What's Free? PHR of Its Own Intelligent Closing Practice Management Paper Tiger

Healthcare IT News - October 2007

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