Healthcare IT News - November 2007 - (Page 16) 16 Healthcare IT News ■ November 2007 Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., says hand washing is the key to preventing infection. “I do think that mobile devices may serve as fomites (carriers of infectious organisms) and that in general these devices are not easily cleaned,” Davidson said. “It is a reasonable concern to recognize this and hence with that awareness for clinicians who use mobile devices to understand that they must disinfect their hands before and after using their personal hOSpItaLS & IdNs mobile devices.” He said Maimonides does not have a policy regarding the maintenance of personal mobile devices because the organization does not envision personal mobile devices being used in patient care. As for keyboards, they are cleaned regularly, he said. “I watched several on one counter being done in my ED just yesterday morning.” “Anecdotally,” says Malkary, “many organizations don’t have policies. Nobody wants to take responsibility for cleaning these devices.” Add to this the new Medicare rules that would withhold payments to hospitals for the costs of treating certain “conditions that could reasonably have been prevented,” and the concern over infections rise. Spyglass conducted the telephone interviews over a fourmonth period beginning in April. More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: MobILe 1107 www.HealthcareITNews.com MoBIle Continued from page 15 INfeCTIoN Continued from page 1 25 percent of the 102 physicians interviewed said they were concerned about the infection risks associated with mobile technology. Spyglass founder and managing director Gregg Malkary figures the increased concern is directly related to the increased use of devices. Steven J. Davidson, MD, chairman of emergency medicine at l Easy. Ergonomic. Economic. Carstens redesigned WALKaroo III™ now features an easy-lift cylinder with hand lever control for smooth adjustment to sitting or standing positions. WALKaroo III also features: • Clean lines and non-porous materials that address infection control • Design that provides unobstructed line of vision • High security locking system that keeps notebooks and patient records safe and secure • Large work surface and adjustable full-sized keyboard tray for convenient POC patient record entry Options: • Retractable cable reel • Battery packs • Bar code scanner holster • Baskets • Mouse house For more information about the WALKaroo III Mobile PC Cart and other Carstens charting products and accessories, visit www.carstensEMR.com, or call 1.800.621.5051. so-called “super-bug.” Though the infection hit schools hard, it also put the spotlight on hospitalacquired infections. “This finding underscores that healthcare professionals are dealing with a variety of competing demands in working to prevent healthcare-associated infections,” said Blair Childs, senior vice president of public affairs for Premier. He said that 26 states have public reporting requirements that are placing new demands on hospitals, as is the new “present on admission” coding system mandated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid that requires strict screening for infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million infections are acquired each year in hospital settings, and those infections cause about 90,000 deaths. Financially, hospital-based infections accounted for about $4.5 billion in excess healthcare costs in 2005, according to the CDC. “More and more hospitals are recognizing the need to use automated surveillance systems for infection control,” said Stan Pestotnik, president and CEO of Salt Lake City-based TheraDoc, a technology company that makes electronic systems designed to detect and help prevent infection. Companies like MedMined in Birmingham, Ala., and Cereplex in Germantown, Md., offer similar technology. The Joint Commission, which sets the standards for U.S. hospitals, has no specific rules on the drug-resistant infection known as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Pestotnik agrees with Childs that state legislation is accelerating hospitals’ uptake of the monitoring systems. The state of Pennsylvania, for example, recently passed a bill requiring hospitals to have an electronic surveillance system for hospital-acquired infections in place by Dec. 31, 2008. The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York, a 15-hospital system, uses TheraDoc technology combined with technology from FirstWatch of Encinitas, Calif., to monitor for infections. “These two surveillance platforms, working in conjunction, will provide us the ability to see trends in realtime and respond more quickly,” said Brian O’Neil, senior vice president of emergency medical services at North Shore-Long Island. The Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Administration Medical Center in Houston, Texas, rolled out TheraDoc technology last month. The technology is integrated with the VA’s electronic health record, VistA. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: INFeCtIoN 1107 l © Copyright 2007 Carstens e l Connect: CarSteNS 1107 Your Partner in the Evolution of Charting http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8038 http://www.carstensEMR.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8014 http://www.carstensEMR.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=8086
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