Health IT

Debunking the myths around asynchronous care

Tech

January 25, 2022

It is no secret that telehealth adoption has skyrocketed as a result of the pandemic, and because of that, many health systems are in the process of shifting to a virtual-first hybrid care model. Unfortunately, video visits, which most will equate with telehealth, have done little to help with the age-old issues of patient access and convenience, provider efficiency, and rising health care costs.

Patients often encounter the same frustrations during …

Information overload and physician burnout: a KevinMD panel discussion [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

January 22, 2022

Welcome to a special episode of The Podcast by KevinMD.

In this 60-minute episode, I partner with DrFirst, a pioneer in health IT for over 20 years. We bring together physicians with different backgrounds to explore information overload and physician burnout.

Dr. Sameer Badlani is chief digital officer, …

A new boon for Big Data and patient care

Michael R. McGuire

Policy

January 13, 2022

Big Data in medicine is the data analysis of large amounts of patient medical information to improve medical care. Analysis of data may be used to pick the best intervention for a patient based upon care outcomes of similar patients or to evaluate physicians.

The primary source of patient medical information is patient medical records, where a medical record reports what happens during an encounter, where an encounter …

Physician informatics demystified

Afua Aning, MD

Physician

January 8, 2022

Nurse: “I need help with the computer; patient transfer needs to be completed.”

Me: “Ma’am, the patient’s medications are on ‘MAR HOLD,’ which means Medication Administration Record Hold. Therefore, we cannot administer medication unless an attending physician releases this hold. Can we get the physician on the phone for him to reconcile the meds?”

Nurse: Reluctant to call the physician, insists on completing the transfer at the unit manager screen. Finally, she …

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Physician informatics demystified

Disrupt health care with blockchain

Laramey Peugh

Tech

December 22, 2021

Health care requires forward progression in the chase for quality, safety, and sustainability. When considering how far we have come collectively, success is often celebrated. Be it a new vaccine to curb a pandemic, an advanced diagnostic tool to expedite diagnoses or process alteration to achieve sustained quality, advancement is paramount in both length and quality of life and care delivery. Retrospectively, one can look with ease on the way …

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Disrupt health care with blockchain

Health care technology innovation from COVID

Bela Desai

Tech

December 7, 2021

The provision of quality medical services is the main target that every health care provider aims at achieving. Medical practitioners should have effective technical skills to ease their service delivery to their clients regardless of the health care sector’s various challenges.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many government-imposed restriction measures had adverse effects in many sectors, including health care. Patients with comorbidities have a weak immune system, and …

The race to find uses for Big Data

Afua Aning, MD

Tech

December 6, 2021

Smartwatch wearers: Have you checked your smartwatch lately? Did it tell you how many steps you have or how fast your heart is beating? How accurate is the information? What does that number mean for your overall health, and where do all of those numbers go after they are reported back to your computer?

The health care industry is under constant pressure to securely store patient information and still have it …

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The race to find uses for Big Data

How can technology innovation save primary care? [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

November 18, 2021

“I believe there is a formula that can reduce the risk of burnout and save primary care, rooted in one key objective: Remove work from primary care doctors and nursing staff’s plates immediately.

Easier said than done. And that’s where technology and clinical navigation must be leveraged — to assist, facilitate, …

What does it mean to be a nurse innovator?

Tiffany Kelley, PhD, MBA, RN

Tech

November 4, 2021

A nurse innovator is a nurse who specializes in bringing forth positive change in health care quality and equity by addressing the unmet needs of a target population through new products, processes, and services. Innovators have existed throughout the history of nursing which dates to the 19th century. Yet, the formalization of a ‘nurse innovator’ role has only begun to emerge within health care organizations across the U.S. over the …

How digital therapeutics can strengthen the provider-patient relationship and improve behavioral health outcomes

Benjamin Alouf, MD and Lara Jaradat, MD

Tech

November 2, 2021

Research shows that early intervention in mental health conditions is critical for achieving better outcomes. Left unaddressed, conditions tend to progress. The depression will worsen. The anxiety will escalate. The disorder can intensify to the point where a child or teen can’t function, won’t get out of bed, may start self-medicating – and the list goes on.

Even though it could change the trajectory of an adolescents’ mental health condition, providers …

Sharing medical information between EHRs: 4 different approaches

Andy Muchmore, MD

Tech

October 13, 2021

The current COVID pandemic has brought into stark contrast the woeful state of medical data collection and data sharing in the United States. It has been a central goal of Health and Human Services (HHS) to at first encourage and later mandate sharing clinical data across multiple electronic health records. Unfortunately, progress has been slow and actual clinically useful widespread adoption of shared medical data remains an aspiration. Here, we …

Can medicine transcend beyond the clinic walls? I’d like to see us try.

Kirk Heath, MD

Physician

October 10, 2021

Nothing like a tragic global pandemic to make everyone rethink their careers. This past year and a half have brought a lot of changes to the workplace. Many of us don’t want to go back to the way things were. According to a Pew Research Center survey from late 2020, of the 71 percent of employees working from home because of the pandemic, more than half, given …

When telemedicine leads to burnout

Heather Hansen, JD

Physician

October 2, 2021

Recently, one of my coaching clients came to our Zoom session looking exhausted. I wasn’t surprised. She’s a physician, a leader at her hospital, and the past two years have been a lot for her. COVID takes its toll in many ways, and it has changed her forever. But this day her biggest challenge was something a little bit different. She was tired of cameras.

“I’m seeing so many patients through …

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When telemedicine leads to burnout

From electric fish to smart device EHRs: the mind-blowing evolution of health care technology

Afua Aning, MD

Tech

August 31, 2021

Fun fact: The first recorded use of electric stimulation to ease pain was in … get ready … CE 46! That’s right, nearly 2,000 years ago, ancient Roman writer Scribonius Largus described the use of torpedo fish, aquatic animals capable of electrical discharge, to heal. This system is still as common in health care settings as a conventional TENS Unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation). Similarly, many health care IT innovations …

How to recover from a bad electronic health records implementation

Afua Aning, MD

Tech

August 4, 2021

Is your health care organization reeling from a bad EHR implementation?

There have been rumblings from hospital leadership and congressional committees about the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospitals’ implementation of the Cerner Corporation electronic health record (EHR) replacing the VistA EHR. The $10 million EHR overhaul has been controversial since the staggered rollout started in Spokane, Washington. One report noted that months after the go-live, fewer users knew how to operate the …

Is Open Notes as good in practice as it is in theory?

Jennifer Henderson

Tech

July 23, 2021

Earlier this year, a federal rule that requires clinical information such as doctors’ notes and lab and imaging results to be made immediately available to patients took effect. A little more than three months out from implementation, there are mixed reviews as to how well the so-called “Open Notes” rule is actually improving patient care.

Patient advocates and even many physicians have supported the concept of electronic health information …

3 mistakes physicians make that triple charting time

Gail Gazelle, MD

Physician

July 19, 2021

Let’s face it, what’s getting most physicians down is not their patients. No, ask any group of physicians what the hardest part of the job is, and you’ll like get a pretty consistent response: It’s the EMR! With studies showing that we spend, on average, two hours on “paperwork” for every hour in the room with a patient, there’s no question that it is a massive time suck for most. …

The burden of the documentation and administrative tasks on physicians needs to be lightened significantly

Rosemary Eseh-Logue, MD

Physician

July 19, 2021

It takes a special person to care for people during their most vulnerable states, to keep intimate details about people while remaining compassionate even toward the seemingly vilest of persons. The white color of a physicians’ coat can be a metaphor for the purity expected of physicians. A physician’s signature or words carry weight. With such power comes the responsibility to be trustworthy.

Documentation is an important part of patient care. …

The rise of non-traditional nursing

Jessica Hodges, RN

Tech

July 7, 2021

Nurses are an essential component of the American health care system and are continually in high demand nationwide. For years, nurses have elected to leave the field or have sought alternative professions instead of working in a traditional nursing role full-time. The pandemic brought into focus the need for work-life balance across professions. Whether strained from high-stress levels, financial upset, demanding hours or an overwhelming workload, nursing …

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The rise of non-traditional nursing

Doctors now must provide patients their health data, online and on demand

Sarah Kwon

Policy

May 22, 2021

Last summer, Anna Ramsey suffered a flare-up of juvenile dermatomyositis, a rare autoimmune condition, posing a terrifying prospect for the Los Angeles resident: She might have to undergo chemotherapy, further compromising her immune system during a pandemic.

After an agonizing three-day wait, the results of a blood test came back in her online patient portal — but she didn’t understand them. As hours passed, Ramsey bit …

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