A perfect storm is brewing in the healthcare industry. Experienced workers are leaving the industry at a far higher rate than qualified workers are entering — and the medical industry is rapidly expanding.
Clinton Wingrove, EVP and principal consultant at Pilat HR Solutions, mentions several factors causing this shift and offers suggestions for how the storm might be averted.
According to Wingrove, it all starts with the baby boomers. The generation currently has the most experience in the healthcare field — and that experience needs to be kept or replaced. This retreat from the workforce has increased as many healthcare practitioners who planned to work for a few more years to retired early avoiding the headache and expense of EHR and ICD-10 implementation and the new Medicare rules.
It’s undeniable. A growing number of physicians, medical centers and hospitals have made the move from writing pen-and-paper prescriptions to electronic prescribing. Equally undeniable are the holdouts: doctors and medical centers still reluctant about e-prescribing.
What will it take to convince the skeptics that this new way of sending prescriptions to pharmacies is the right move? The best argument should include the financial, operational and accuracy improvements e-prescribing will bring to medical providers.
HIStalk reader “Kermit” pointed out a recent video published by the Massachusetts Medical Society’s “Physician Focus” program featuring Tom Sullivan, MD, Chief Strategic Officer at DrFirst, and Hugh Taylor, M.D. The video aims to discuss what health IT really is and what it means to physicians. The trio discuss electronic medication history, e-prescribing, the benefits of these systems and much more. Check out the video here or by clicking the image below.
As e-mail and texting have become our favored means of written communication, handwriting has almost disappeared. Penmanship is becoming a modern form of hieroglyphics, intelligible only to literary scholars.
But one place where handwriting persists is on medical prescriptions, and that’s unfortunate. Sloppy writing or inappropriate directions can lead to what doctors delicately refer to as preventable A.D.E.’s, or adverse drug events. These can encompass minor but still avoidable problems, like rashes or diarrhea, and much more serious events like, well, death.
Studies show that errors are much less likely if a doctor clicks to select medications from an onscreen list and sends the prescription data via computer to the pharmacy. Rainu Kaushal, a professor of medical informatics at Weill Cornell Medical College, led a study published in 2010 in which she and four colleagues followed prescriptions issued by a sample of providers in outpatient settings in New York. (Providers included physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners.) Some were prescribing electronically for the first time, and some continued to use paper.
The researchers found an astonishing 37 errors for every 100 paper prescriptions, versus around 7 per 100 for those who used e-prescribing software.
These errors didn’t even include legibility issues, when the pharmacist couldn’t read the handwriting with confidence and called the provider to clarify.
A Food and Drug Administration July 19, 2011, press release announced: FDA outlines oversight of mobile medical applications. The release listed various apps being considered for regulation and how the regulations would be enforced. The final regulations are open to public comment.
Mobile medical health apps, which are used as an accessory to a regulated FDA device or those that transform a smart phone into a regulated device using sensors or other devices, are unique to the FDA regulation process. These apps are not a food, drug device or procedure. However, mobile health apps fall under FDA’s purview because they function as part of device technology. Mobile health apps’ widespread use has caused the FDA to seek regulation to protect the public from apps that could endanger the public.
If smart phones or tablets are used as an EKG machine or a way to test blood sugar, those apps will be regulated. If you’re a smart phone or tablet to use to chart a patient’s diet and exercise program then those apps will not be regulated.
Healthcare is on the verge of a revolution in mobile technology thanks to a WiFi.
According to the WiFi Alliance, WiFi technology is expected to explode, becoming more affordable, faster, more available and more reliable. WiFi could soon replace all 3G and 4G networks and make WiFi coverage universally accessible, as quoted in Tech Goes Strong.
For healthcare IT mobile apps, the advent of universal WiFi would enable developers to build powerful mobile applications. Currently those apps utilize tablet computers or smart phones to connect via 3G or 4G networks with top speeds running at 12mpbs. WiFi has a current top speed of 300mbps. The increase in speed makes electronic health record transfers, additions and manipulation much faster.
