Worth a Read: Articles of Interest to the Healthcare IT Field

Finding the Evidence
By: Stacey Kramer
HealthCare Informatics, January, 2007

The recent AHIMA conference took a look at Evidence Based Medicine, how far we’ve come and where we need to go. The key seems to be categorizing the research in a way that makes it easily accessible and provides a safety check list for the patient profile to help clinicians deliver better, safer patient care.
Read article

RSNA Rising
By: Mark Hagland
Healthcare Informatics, January, 2007

The annual Radiological Society of North America’s (RSNA) Scientific Assembly (Nov. 26 – Dec. 1, 2006) is widening its appeal to include CIO’s and CFO’s. The 2006 exhibit floor was notably more IT oriented than ever. The exponential growth of data collection in Picture Archiving and Communications Systems and Radiology Information Systems was a topic of great concern as these systems are requiring greater and greater storage capabilities.
Read article

Catching the P4P Wave
By: Mark Hagland
Healthcare Informatics, November, 2006

Pay for Performance initiatives washing over our healthcare system call for measured clinical and patient satisfaction quality outcomes to be documented and for payers to financially reward providers with higher quality outcomes. At a time where a wave of seminars and conferences are dealing with pay for performance this article reviews some sites and insights that are making progress towards embedding their quality initiatives into practice.
Read article

Methods to the Madness
By: Mark Hagland
Healthcare Informatics, January, 2007

Staff at Bronson Methodist Hospital, winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for 2005, reveal their reasons for success in quality initiatives that include people, service, quality, financial strength and growth. Because of the high degree of involvement of Information Technology within the quality initiatives in healthcare, CIO involvement is a must.
Read article