John Halamka is chief information officer, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, and blogs at Life as a Healthcare CIO.

Senior leaders need to periodically reflect on their role

Physician
October 25, 2010

Leaders often think about succession plans for their direct reports, but what about themselves?

What if I had a serious health problem or accident that impaired my ability to lead my IT organizations? Here’s my brief analysis.

Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center

My role at BIDMC is to document the strategies prioritized by our governance groups, ensure our organizational chart structure is optimized for executing the strategies, …

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Senior leaders need to periodically reflect on their role

10 tips for troubleshooting complex EHR infrastructure problems

Tech
September 11, 2010

I recently joined my team while troubleshooting a complex infrastructure problem affecting our community EHR hosting private cloud.

From years of experience doing this, here are my lessons learned.

1. Once the problem is identified, the first step is to ascertain the scope. Call the users to determine what they are experiencing. Test the application or infrastructure yourself. Do not trust the monitoring tools if they indicate all is well but the …

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10 tips for troubleshooting complex EHR infrastructure problems

Meaningful use letter for the hospital board and senior leaders

Tech
August 10, 2010

In January, I wrote a Do it Yourself presentation on meaningful use for folks to use with their Board and Senior leaders.

Now that its August, there is a different kind of Do it Yourself document – a letter to your Board and Senior leaders outlining your plan and timeframe for certification, measurement of meaningful use, and collection of your stimulus funds. We cannot be completely certain about every detail, …

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Meaningful use letter for the hospital board and senior leaders

How to implement CPOE successfully at your hospital

Tech
July 9, 2010

One in every 10 patients admitted to six Massachusetts community hospitals suffered serious and avoidable medication mistakes. This has created a new urgency for all hospitals in the state to install computerized physician order entry (CPOE).

At BIDMC, we implemented CPOE in 2001 and have not had a handwritten order in most areas, except for the 2 days of our network outage in 2002. Implementing CPOE is challenging and requires …

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How to implement CPOE successfully at your hospital

What is the best way to record allergies in hospitals and clinics?

Tech
June 14, 2010

I was recently asked about the best way to record allergies in healthcare environments.

At what point should allergy verification be occurring for a planned hospital admission? Should it be prior to admission or at the time of admission?

Is there any data yet to support decreased adverse drug reactions when the patient is asked to complete their own history initially through a patient portal?

Should data entry of allergies into smaller best …

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What is the best way to record allergies in hospitals and clinics?

How Massachusetts can lead health IT modernization

Tech
May 6, 2010

Although healthcare reform has its supporters and detractors, healthcare IT reform – the use of technology to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare throughout the country – has broad support from all stakeholders.

The passage of last year’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill brought with it a healthcare IT modernization program that could inject about $30 billion into the economy. Since Massachusetts is a leader both in the use …

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How Massachusetts can lead health IT modernization

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