According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. Under healthcare reform, hospitals are being held more accountable for readmissions and greater data transparency. Many hospitals are focusing on heart attack care as a result.
Data collection, analysis and application capabilities built into cardiovascular information systems (CVIS) help hospitals more effectively collect patient data and improve patient care.
Technology does not solve problems. People solve problems. Therein lays the paradox of health IT, e.g. technology increases productivity. Workflow processes flow out of people, not machines. Until IT-enabled processes work to support teamwork, care coordination and innovation, productivity will continue to lag, according to Spencer S. Jones, PhD, from Rand in Boston, and colleagues. They shared their perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine recently.
Jones, et. al., set out to explain the “IT productivity paradox” which fell into three categories: mismeasurement, mismanagement and poor usability.
The Beryl Institute, an organization dedicated to improving the patient experience, describes the patient experience as the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care. In their 2011 study, The State of Patient Experience in American Hospitals, they found that hospitals rank improving the patient experience second only to improving quality and patient safety.
Recently, Fierce Healthcare published an article that provided a list of patient experience best practices. Our list below cites this article when creating five ways to provide a better patient experience in your hospital or healthcare organization:
A medical imaging department is a high energy and high stress environment. Often, radiologists work 50 hour plus weeks with varying shifts, in addition to being on call when they are off work.
The environment is unpredictable; emergency response is a way of life. Diverse personalities, especially in large departments, add to the stress level. Tension and conflict are inevitable. And, tension and stress interrupts concentration, which can lead to mistakes in patient care.
The majority of conflict in any healthcare department or organization arises from lack of communication. As George Bernard Shaw famously observed, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
With the advent of healthcare IT, technology solutions not only enhance patient care, but also reduce costs within a health care facility. Nowhere is this more evident than with medical imaging across the enterprise. Here are four reasons how enterprise imaging does both.
1) Managing massive amounts of specialized imaging applications. One only has to enter the sprawling complex of a state-of-the-art medical center, like, OSF in Illinois or Iowa Health System to understand how dependent the hospital and its constituents, e.g. patients, physicians, radiology oncologists and health care technicians, are on the smooth flow of information. Simplifying the workflow through a single point of distribution is the first step, among many, that we’ve taken so that hospitals can realize the full value of medical imaging.
As value-based care (rather than volume-based care) evolves toward becoming the norm, providers increasingly are looking to technology to carry much of that load. Craig E. Samitt, MD, MBA, president and CEO of Dean Health System in Wisconsin, acknowledges the transformation that technology has brought to his organization and offers his predictions on the future of accountable care.
Implementation Must Be Coupled With Knowledge
Success will come from optimizing existing technologies and using electronic health records (EHRs) to their fullest potential. Processes and tools that influence quality, such as PACS, preventive screening or service enhancements, must be maximized in order to create a system that is truly accountable.
While doctors, in general, are in high demand, cardiologists and cardiovascular imaging specialists, in particular, are actively being recruited by a number of hospital organizations, such as the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. The day-to-day costs of running and managing a private practice combined with declining reimbursements are pushing cardiologists to seek out hospitals as their first line of defense. Having willing recruits makes filling these critical positions that much easier.
According to customer service experts Kristin Anderson and Ron Zemke, authors of “Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service,” the following five key factors determine the vast majority of customer satisfaction with any given service:
In any busy hospital setting, workflow processes are critical to efficient communications and quality patient outcomes. State-of-the-art medical imaging software allows hospitals to manage diagnostic imaging across the enterprise. Parkland Health and Hospital System proved this premise when management decided to rebuild from the inside out as it began plans for a new facility.
This Dallas-based hospital employs approximately 60 radiologists, 62 residents and 19 fellows and is the University of Texas-Southwestern’s teaching hospital. As Parkland began its journey to enter the high-tech world of communications systems, they had five different picture and archiving communication systems (PACS). To say that their diagnostic imaging needed an upgrade would be an understatement.
A new era of informed consent may be upon the medical imaging field.
Current studies suggest that 95 percent of patients are not informed of any radiation risk prior to a medical imaging exam, according to Richard C. Semelka, M.D., Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and colleagues. While this figure may come as a surprise, James A. Brink, M.D., Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine and colleagues believe that informed consent has lost its true intent.
