by medicaltechont | Mar 12, 2010 | Healthcare, Technology
The unprecedented level of detail in EMR clinical data opens new possibilities for defining clinical quality measures in more clinically meaningful ways. However, more detailed data can cause difficulties in ensuring that data across institutions are comparable, according to an article in the online March edition of the Journal of Medical Informatics Association.
Michael G. Kahn, MD, department of pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver and Daksha Ranade from the department of clinical informatics at The Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colo., sought to examine the impact of billing and clinical data extracted from an EMR system on the calculation of an adverse drug event (ADE) quality measure approved for use in The Joint Commission’s ORYX program, a mandatory national hospital quality reporting system.
http://www.healthimaging.com/index.php?option=com_articles&view=article&id=21163:jamia-more-detailed-emr-data-may-make-comparisons-difficult-XX
The Child Health Corporation of America‘s (CHCA) “Use of Rescue Agents—ADE Trigger” quality measure uses medication billing data from 48 nonprofit free-standing children’s hospitals in the U.S. contained in the Pediatric Health Information Systems (PHIS) data warehouse and was used to create The Joint Commission-approved quality measure, according to the authors.
“Using a similar query, we calculated the quality measure using PHIS plus four data sources extracted from our EMR system:…Four versions of the ‘Use of Rescue Agent – ADE Trigger’ quality measure’s numerator and denominator events were developed as SQL-based queries against the EPIC EMR system:
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by medicaltechont | Apr 7, 2008 | Uncategorized
Engineering techniques can be used to eliminate inefficiencies in Canada’s health care system, as the work by a new Toronto research centre shows. In the modern race to innovate, the health care industry is lagging decades behind manufacturing and other service industries. Michael Carter is ready to launch a game of catch-up.
As head of the new Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering at the University of Toronto, Dr. Carter’s job seems simple on paper, but a lot tougher to execute: Replace the isolated elements of the system with a more efficient, productive health care system that gets everyone pulling in the same direction and makes the best use of limited resources.
“Every time I go into a hospital, I’m looking at it with a different eye,” Dr. Carter says. “Everywhere I look I see opportunities for improving efficiency. … It’s not just cutting costs. It’s really important to have the system set up properly.”
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by medicaltechont | Apr 3, 2008 | Technology
They’re considered a vital tool in diagnosing cancer and deciding how to treat it.
But in Ontario, cancer patients don’t have access to PET scanners — imaging technology around for almost 30 years but still considered experimental in this province. “If I was a cancer patient, I would definitely scream for this technology that will let you know if you’re a candidate for surgery, whether to remove your tumour, whether you need surgery plus radiation or if you need chemotherapy,” said Dr. Jean-Luc Urbain, citywide chief of nuclear medicine in London.
Urbain is welcoming a call by Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer, who plans to introduce a resolution at Queen’s Park calling on the government to make PET scans available to Ontarians.
“PET scans are available to patients pretty well throughout the world — in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the United States and other provinces in Canada,” Witmer said in a phone interview. “But here in Ontario, if your doctor recommends a PET scan, you are forced to travel to the United States at your own expense.”
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