Build Eisenhower’s Highway System for Today’s Needs
A modernized, interconnected healthcare system would electronically link physician offices, hospitals, pharmacies, public health agencies and other key first responders, providing valuable data to prepare for and respond to an emergency.
David Merritt, Center for Health Transformation
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Business Intelligence and the High-Performance Provider
Using business intelligence tools to transform data into actionable insights, healthcare providers can better measure, manage and improve how they do business. To this end, providers will create a list of parameters to monitor and compare with established benchmarks to measure high performance.
Lewis Redd, Accenture, R. Wesley Champion, Accenture
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Business Process Outsourcing Goes Mission-Critical
In today's ‘no margin, no mission’ healthcare environment, an outsourcing vendor able to combine business process expertise, global delivery and thorough knowledge of healthcare issues is a provider's best ally in transforming back-office support services into a competitive advantage.
Elizabeth Guyton, Accenture
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Clinical Decision Support: Lessons From the Field on the Integration of Medical Intelligence and Information Technology
Although still in its early stages, a growing body of research of both what is and what is not working in CDS is appearing. This paper will focus on the most recent lessons learned in this emerging discipline of CDS and conclude with recommendations of the most promising avenues of investigation and development.
Stephen G. Patterson, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, William Bria, University of Michigan, Sandra French, B.A., R.N., B.C., Shriners Hospitals for Children
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Consumer-Centric Focus on Billing Improves Patient Satisfaction
As patients become the real healthcare customers, hospitals must provide them with tools that provide quick and easy access to personal and financial healthcare information.
David C. Hammer, McKesson (EMC)
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Creating Electronic Health Record Systems with InterSystems HealthShare®
The Fast Path to Connected Healthcare
Joel F. Richman, InterSystems Corporation
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Development of a ‘Mobile Web’ for Healthcare Data Collection Using Tablet PC and Mi-Forms Technology
Over the past two years we have been developing a technology that utilizes tablet PC technology with an innovative software product called Mi-Forms (Mi-Co, Inc., Research Triangle Park, N.C.). The beauty of this technology is that it makes data collection and validation concurrent and portable, incorporating information that already exists in the hospital information system with data at the point of care.
Richard E. Shaw, Sutter Pacific Heart Centers
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Early Experiences With Positive Patient Identification
How do we positively identify our patients so that we are confident they are receiving the correct medications, have the correct blood samples sent to the lab and receive the right blood products during a transfusion?
John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S., NEHEN
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Eliminating Healthcare Fraud Through Technology
There are many types of healthcare fraud. It can be driven by healthcare and insurance providers, patients, employers or any combination of the above. Healthcare providers might make claims for services not provided, or overcharge for services they did provide.
James Taylor, Fair Isaac Corporation
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Healthcare Collaborative Spearheads Adoption of EHRs in Massachusetts
A forward-thinking nonprofit company is funding pilot projects in three Massachusetts communities to prove the worth of ubiquitous adoption of electronic health records, embedded decision support and health information exchange.
Micky Tripathi, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  High Performance: A Road Map to Payer Success in U.S. Healthcare
The only constant in the healthcare industry is the existence of continual change. In an ever-evolving business climate, what can payers do to outperform peers? The answer lies in their ability to harness change through a series of high-performance attributes used to define success.
Peter Kongstvedt, M.D., Accenture, Erik Swanson, Accenture
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Hitachi Application Optimized Storage™Solutions for Aligning IT and Business Objectives
From Fortune 100 enterprises to small businesses, in today’s business world, applications and the storage environments they depend upon have become critical drivers of business processes and decisions that impact organizational growth, risk, and profitability. Therefore, it’s imperative that businesses more closely align storage infrastructure with application needs.
Hitachi Data Systems,
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Intelligent Communications Enhance Productivity
What does intelligent communications mean to a healthcare organization? Quite simply, it is the result of embedding communications inside your work flow and processes. Leveraging this intelligence means hospitals can use different communications tools depending upon the particular user, environment or operational requirement. Today, intelligent communications enables healthcare organizations of all sizes (from a local physician’s office to a nationwide healthcare system) to deliver competitive advantage through improved organizational efficiency.
Scott Washburn, Avaya
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Leadership Strategies for Reaching Top Performance Faster
It is not an easy task to move an average-performing hospital forward. Encouraging signs, such as the success of the 100,000 Lives Campaign and optimism on the part of hospital leaders, suggest that progress is being made. However, an objective analysis of publicly available data suggests otherwise, showing that nearly 2,000 boards and CEOs still face the problem of demonstrating any measurable improvement in performance during their tenure.
Jean Chenoweth, Solucient, part of Thomson Healthcare, Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D., Solucient, part of Thomson Healthcare
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Lessons Learned From a National Pay-for-Performance Program
Pay for performance has finally come of age in healthcare. The Bridges To Excellence programs have identified 10 key ingredients to a successful program.
Francois de Brantes, Bridges To Excellence
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Leveraging Health Information Technology and Health Information Exchange for Value-Based Healthcare Initiatives
Concerns about cost and quality are driving the federal government to take action. On August 22, 2006, President Bush issued an executive order calling for healthcare programs that are administered or sponsored by the federal government to make available cost and quality information to their beneficiaries, as well as to utilize HIT systems and products that meet recognized interoperability standards.
Janet Marchibroda, eHealth Initiative
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Making the Case: An Evolutionary Strategy to Achieve Interoperability
I’m not suggesting that these efforts were ill-advised or ill-conceived. But as I’ve analyzed these initiatives, it has become apparent to me that there may well be a different, strategic approach that can accomplish the interoperability many integrated delivery networks seek and that can bypass many of the innate barriers that have largely stymied these efforts to date. I call this an “evolutionary” or “stepping stone” approach to interoperability.
Peter van der Grinten, dbMotion
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Passwords – the Weakest Link in Healthcare Security
Passwords are still the most pervasive tool used to secure systems. As a result, the cost of managing password-based security represents a growing burden for the healthcare IT professional. Despite countless expenses and hours in creating guidelines and procedures and purchasing safeguards, one user can still override all efforts by simply sharing a password.
Vance Bjorn, DigitalPersona
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Pervasive Healthcare
The global healthcare industry is facing a crisis in chronic care that soon will be exacerbated as the baby boomer generation ages. This growing demand for chronic care is placing a tremendous economic burden on governments, private employers and individual consumers, and it is straining the capacity of skilled care professionals and nursing homes. Meanwhile, technologies, like miniaturized sensors, wireless networks and mobile devices, are enabling telehealth and remote monitoring of patients, and redefining the new healthcare reality.
Luis E. Taveras, Accenture, Dr. Dadong Wan, Accenture
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Preventing Medication Errors With New Technologies
St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh implemented – with dramatic results – a medications verification system that combined bar coding with passive RFID tagging.
Thomas Ague, St. Clair Hospital, Richard Schaeffer, St. Clair Hospital
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Carol Diamond
The managing director of the health program at the Markle Foundation explains why public trust is essential to the successful exchange of electronic health information – and how we can build it.
Carol Diamond, Markle Foundation
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Daniel Nigrin
Practicing physician and IT innovator Dr. Daniel Nigrin discusses his experiences at Children’s Hospital Boston and the special challenges that face the pediatric specialty.
Daniel Nigrin, Children's Hospital Boston
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Grace-Marie Turner
If we don’t approach healthcare like other sectors of the economy, where consumers shop for value and seek services that are faster, better and cheaper, we’re doomed to default into a government-run healthcare system.
Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Gregg Malkary
One of the nation’s leading healthcare consultants assesses current IT trends and takes a high tech peek into the future.
Gregg Malkary, Spyglass Consulting Group
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Greta Sherman
Although online job recruitment facilitates the hiring of more qualified candidates, the current staffing crisis in healthcare is about more than just that; it encompasses better education and enhanced practice environments as well.
Greta Sherman, Monster.com
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Jay Srini
An evolving area of healthcare technology pertaining to consumer-enabling and patient-enabling technologies is sometimes referred to as “pervasive healthcare” or “unbound healthcare.” The fundamental premise is that healthcare has to follow the patient and not vice versa. In other words, care is provided in a distributed healthcare ecosystem whether the patient is at home, at the workplace or at a longterm care facility.
Jay Srini, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Melissa A. Fitzpatrick
The chief healthcare strategist for SAS discusses the importance of managing data and transforming it into useful, actionable information.
Melissa A. Fitzpatrick, SAS
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Michael Meisel
RES-Q Healthcare Systems’ Michael Meisel discusses the evolution and direction of staffing and scheduling solutions.
Michael Meisel, RES-Q Healthcare Systems
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Q&A With Stephen Lieber
The president and CEO of HIMSS discusses his organization’s efforts in driving America’s move toward an interoperable healthcare system.
Stephen Lieber, HIMSS
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Software Plus Collection Expertise Equals Powerful Accounts Receivable Platform
Faced with a formidable competitive challenge from national diagnostic companies, both hospital-based and independent clinical laboratories are adopting a more aggressive stance in their efforts to defend and increase market share. Behind the push is a realization that the advantages enjoyed by smaller labs – immediate consultation with a pathologist, rapid turnaround and detailed knowledge of the local market – can be key differentiators in the crowded lab market.
Eddie Miller, Per-Se Technologies
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Telehealth: A Cure for the Coming Healthcare Crisis
Caring for an aging population and chronically ill patients requires a new strategy – a paradigm shift that telehealth is uniquely positioned to provide. Although telehealth technology spans the basic to the futuristic, it’s fundamentally defined as the use of electronic data and communication systems to deliver medical information and services remotely through a telephone line or the Internet. Although the concept is simple, the impact is significant.
Scott Sheppard, WebVMC
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  The Business of Healthcare Demands a Legal EHR
The business of healthcare depends upon a hospital’s ability to produce a legal health record, the hospital’s documented set of information for each patient encounter. The legal health record helps the hospital get paid, justifies its performance and improves its performance.
Carlton M. Cottrell, ChartOne, April D. Robertson, ChartOne
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  The Case for Decision Support: Safer Medication Management and Lower Costs
Putting the right information in the hands of the right people at the right time via a systematic deployment process is a key success factor in an organization’s ability to ensure the safety and quality of medication use while managing drug costs.
Jerome A. Osheroff, M.D., Thomson Healthcare Micromedex, Gina Moore, Thomson Healthcare Micromedex
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  The Clinical and Financial Transformation of Asia’s Largest Private Hospital
In January 1997, Bumrungrad Hospital opened its 554-bed replacement facility along with a newly commissioned computer system. A few months before the facility opened, the management team realized that the clinical and financial information systems they had purchased and customized would not be able to meet end users’ needs and cope with patient volumes. Unfortunately, due to long implementation cycles of hospital systems, they were left with no other choice but to open their doors with their new system.
Patrick Downing, Global Care Solutions, Curtis Schroeder, Bumrungrad Hospital
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  The Impact on Healthcare Costs For American Companies
Because U.S. healthcare challenges have created a competitive gap for American companies, many are calling for the transformation of the healthcare industry.
Jeffrey Rideout, M.D., M.A., F.A.C.P., Cisco Systems, Inc.
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  Toward a Mature Security Model
HIPAA Administrative Simplification intends to do what other industries have successfully achieved by sitting down with competitors – standardize common electronic transactions to reduce healthcare’s overhead cost.While not a surprising piece of legislation, Administrative Simplification’s companion privacy and security regulations have jolted just about every corner of the industry.
Kate Borten, The Marblehead Group
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007

  WiFi-Based Patient Monitoring
Healthcare is an ideal environment for the use of wireless and mobile computing technologies. From a process perspective, the hospital of today can be compared to a logistical or supply chain operation. There are multiple departments through which the patient moves, while at the same time, critical patient-specific information is needed for real-time decision support. Clinicians must have access to this information at the right time – wherever they are – without increasing their workload.
Scott Bradley, Dräger Medical Systems
HCT Project Volume 4, January 30, 2007