United Regional (Wichita Falls, TX) earned distinction as one of the Truven Health Analytics 100 Top Hospitals®, from a field of nearly 3,000 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals. Performance in various clinical, financial and patient satisfaction measures helped United Regional win this recognition.  Leadership across these 10 categories reflects a commitment to developing and maintaining a hospital-wide culture of excellence and the motivation to adopt new technologies and techniques that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of patient care. United Regional also received an Everest Award. Only 17 hospitals in the country received this honor, which recognizes both greatest five-year improvement and top one-year performance. We recently talked with Dwayne McKee, Director of Clinical Intelligence and Business Intelligence at United Regional, to get his thoughts on how technology supported patient care quality initiatives that contributed to his organization achieving these honors. [...]

St. Luke’s Physician Group (Bethlehem, PA) should be proud. It recently introduced a new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to 80 primary care providers, and 78 of them were able to attest to Meaningful Use. Most impressively, they achieved it in less than six months. One of the keys to accomplishing this feat so quickly was rolling out the EHR along with Allscripts WandTM, according to St. Luke’s vice president of physician services, Linda Gately. Wand is an iPad app that enables clinicians to perform many tasks, such as taking vitals, reviewing appointments or checking test results. “When we first saw Wand at ACE [Allscripts Client Experience], we loved it,” said Linda. “We thought it would be great if nurses could use tablets instead of clunky laptops and carts. We actually held our EHR go-live until we could also roll [...]

No substitutions. I dislike it when I see that phrase on a restaurant’s menu. Why can’t patrons change up entrées a bit to suit their palates? Maybe this inflexibility rubs me the wrong way because at Allscripts we are so focused on an Open approach.  We want developers to be able to access data from our electronic health records (EHR) system, pair it with new functionality and create a wide variety of apps that satisfy the cravings of healthcare providers. That’s why we sponsor the Open App Challenge.  It’s a great way to showcase the innovation that emerges when inventors have access to the right ingredients to help improve health care. For example, Mana Health’s new app taps patient records to produce visual decision trees that better enable clinicians to make accurate diagnoses at the point of care. Taking advantage [...]

You have a passion for health care and helping others. But when you’d rather focus on your practice, sometimes you’re stuck spending time on security protocols, data recovery and server upgrades. And it’s getting even more expensive and time-consuming in today’s complex healthcare environment. Stephanie Bodi, Practice Manager at Huntington Urology (NY), found a better way. In 2009 her practice moved IT infrastructure management off-site to Allscripts Hosting Solution. A hosted solution was right for Huntington Urology for several reasons, including: Patients come first. The practice stays focused on patient care. Information Technology is a core competency at Allscripts; it doesn’t have to be yours. Time to cut costs. Good financial decisions are essential to the overall health of the practice. By using a hosted IT solution, Huntington doesn’t buy or update hardware, or maintain a server room with cooling [...]

Our clients are focused on better Care Coordination, making sure clinicians are in sync as patients receive care from various providers.  It’s a complex issue for the entire continuum of care to solve. As with any major transition, clients will need different healthcare technology as they evolve. We need to support clients with Care Coordination solutions as they move  from a primarily fee-for-service payment system to a model focused on fee -for-value, with an emphasis on managing patients overall health over time. Early movers to this new model have a need for improved workflow solutions that integrate basic continuity of care planning with Electronic Health Records (EHRs).  However, the market will eventually require more advanced population health management capabilities, such as risk modelling/stratification, prediction analytics, gap in care alerting and integrated tasking capabilities across the community of care. Clients are [...]

The founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, earned the nickname “The Lady with the Lamp” from this report in The Times: She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. (Cited in Cook, E. T. The Life of Florence Nightingale) Reading this account, I instantly recognize the nobility of nursing. The tireless efforts and commitment to patient care remain the same. But beyond its focus on patients, nursing is a dynamic profession – always innovating. In honor [...]

While primary care physicians always put patients first, their focus is intensifying as the healthcare industry makes the seismic shift to value-based care. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is one of a number of organizations that support the recognition of Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMH) through a formal program. It aims to improve primary care by using standards that describe clear and specific criteria, which help practices organize care around patients, work in teams and track progress over time. Most everyone agrees that these are laudable goals. But the certification process strikes fear in the hearts of many well-intentioned practices. According to those who have achieved NCQA’s highest certification (Level 3), it may be easier than you think. Two experts — Barbara Johnson, nursing director at Elmwood Health Center in New York, and Deb Donovan, operations director at Derry [...]

Allscripts is enthusiastic about sharing ideas with clients, partners and each other. We get the power of Radical Openness. For a jolt of adrenaline on the topic of new ideas, watch this video from TED 2012. Click here What an awesome testament to the evolutionary power of ideas. Some of the sources of innovation in healthcare are the startups and small companies that push the boundaries of what’s possible. These ideas are accelerating quickly.Q1 2013 was a record-breaking quarter with almost a half billion of capital flowing into healthcare IT. That is twice the amount invested in the same quarter just one year ago. There are a lot of people working to fix healthcare by introducing new ideas and applications. Are your people, processes and technology aligned to capture the power of Radical Openness?

For me success for Open is when we, the inventors of it, are surprised by what people do. Imagine you make steel beams. You might expect people to use them to build skyscrapers and bridges. But someday, someone will build the Eiffel Tower. And we’ll respond with amazement, “You can make that?!” If people only do what we can imagine, then we haven’t built a successful toolkit. When innovators use what you give them to creatively assemble a brand new solution, that’s success. That’s what the Open App Challenge was all about. Phase 1 recipients proved that with access to the right toolkit (Allscripts APIs), they can help solve some of the most vexing problems in health care. For example, keeping patients safe during shift changes. Paving the way for smooth handoffs between care teams Smart Sign Out is working [...]

You tell me, which instruction is easier to understand? 1. Dissect the perforated 5 cm incision (ref. Slot B) on the host structure with the 4.8 cm x 6 cm freestanding flap (ref. Tab A). Adhere the flap to the anterior side of the host structure with a parallel application of a non-toxic adhesion strip. 2. Insert Tab A into Slot B. Secure with tape. For most people, number 2 contains all the info we need. But for a structural engineer, number 1 is more in line with the language of the trade, and includes additional details that could make the difference between the success and failure. The same is true in health care. Physicians need rich, clinical data when making decisions about patient care. But, you can’t expect patients to translate their symptoms into technical medical speak. That’s where [...]