Use of Mobile Devices Increasing in Health Care

A recent article on Bloomberg.com highlights the increasing use of wireless devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs in the delivery and receipt of health care. The article emphasizes not only the popularity of such devices, but the real and potential health benefits they afford or promise, such as increased collaboration between patients and physicians.

The Information Technology group within CCHS is actively exploring ways to leverage this technology for our patients and providers. As usual, things are moving at "County speed", but we hope to include better affordance for mobile devices as part of the iSITE (intranet) redesign project. Beyond that, we want to develop a strategic approach to supporting mobile computing for CCHS. If you have ideas that you would like us to consider, I encourage you to publish them as comments to this post, so that we can begin a conversation about needs, expectations, and visions.

Is there any interest in forming an informal advisory board to offer suggestions and guidance to IT on this topic? Contact me if you'd like to participate.

CMS/HHS Release Meaningful-Use Regs

The CMS and HHS' Office of the National Coordinator issued their much-anticipated final meaningful-use information technology regulations. These are the rules that hospitals and physicians must follow to be eligible for a portion of the $27.3 billion in financial incentives authorized by the stimulus act.

Responding to concerns from providers, hospitals and physicians will not be required to satisfy all of the objectives in the new standard in order to qualify. The new standard establishes a "core set of objectives" and a "menu set of objectives". "Meaningful" EHR users must meet the measure for each objective in the core set and meet all but five of the objectives in the menu set. The standard also adopts an incremental approach to requiring adoption of CPOE (computerized physician order entry).

UW Safely Reduces Resident Hours with Computerized Rounding and Sign-Out

The University of Washington has developed a computer system for the handover of patient responsibilities that promises to reduce the amount of time that residents spend signing out and recopying data prerounds.

The system, called "UW Cores", was evaluated in a 14-week, randomized crossover study involving 14 inpatient resident teams (6 general surgery, 8 internal medicine) at two hospitals. The study suggests that resident time can be reduced while simultaneously improving continuity and enhanced resident efficiency without weakening systemic defenses against error or jeopardizing patient safety.

The study, by Erik Van Eaton, MD, Karen McDonough, MD, William Lober, MD, Eric Johnson, MS, Carlos Pellegrini, MD, and Karen Horvath, MD, is available at the Academic Medicine website. Subscription is required to access the full text.