Electronic Pharmacy May Protect War Veterans From Medication Errors
Thousands of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan sustained
life-threatening injuries but were fortunate enough to return home
alive. But some may have suffered accidental harm or even died from
the incorrect use of potent prescription medications for their pain
and injuries.
A robotic device that dispenses the proper dose of oral prescription
medications to soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injuries, posttraumatic
stress disorder, and other conditions requiring risky medications
is under study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s
(UIC) Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research and Milwaukee’s Columbia
College of Nursing.
“The military has an increasing number of patients with combat-related
injuries that may not allow them to strictly adhere to their medication
regimens,” says Daniel Touchette, a UIC assistant professor of pharmacy
practice, who serves as coprincipal investigator on the project. Some,
he says, “are in transitional care outpatient settings that do not
have nurses or pharmacists to manage their medications daily.”
The study involves the use of an electronic medication management
assistant (EMMA) delivery unit, which is designed to remotely deliver,
manage, and monitor a patient’s drug therapy and adherence in the
outpatient setting under the guidance of a physician, nurse case manager,
and pharmacist.
The hope is that the system “will help ensure that these errors are
minimized while eliminating the need for labor-intensive and inherently
inaccurate practices of manually filling and reorganizing pill boxes,”
Touchette says. “It also eliminates the need for patients to try to
remember whether they have taken their medications as prescribed,
as the system will remind them when a medication has been missed or
already taken.”
— Source: University of Illinois at Chicago
Former HHS Executive Kerry Weems Joins Vangent
Vangent, Inc, a global provider of information management and strategic
business process outsourcing solutions, announced that former Health
and Human Services (HHS) official Kerry Weems will join its leadership
team and serve as senior vice president of health strategy. In this
role, Weems will lead Vangent’s strategy development in the health
and HIT markets.
In January, Weems ended a 28-year career with the federal government
in which he held the position of administrator of the Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services and was also vice chairman of the
American Health Information Community. In those capacities, he implemented
the Medicare e-prescribing program, began pilot projects for EHRs
and PHRs, and instituted a number of payment reforms, including nonpayment
for certain medical errors.
Prior to that, he served in a number of senior positions at HHS, including
deputy chief of staff, chief financial officer, and chief budget officer.
— Source: Vangent, Inc
How Accurate are Hospital Report Cards?
A key statistic that consumer groups and the media often use when
compiling hospital report cards and national rankings can be misleading,
researchers report in a new study. The statistic is called the mortality
index, where a number above 1 indicates a hospital had more deaths
than expected within a given specialty. Lower than 1 means there were
fewer than the expected number of deaths.
The study by Loyola University Health System researchers and published
in the Journal of Neurosurgery illustrates
how the mortality index can be misleading in at least two major specialties:
neurology and neurosurgery. The index fails to take into account such
factors as whether a hospital treats complex cases transferred from
other hospitals or whether a hospital treats lower risk elective cases
or higher risk nonelective cases.
“A hospital with a lower mortality index may not be a better hospital
for patient care but rather a place where the patient mix has been
refined or limited,” says senior author Thomas Origitano, MD, PhD,
chairman of the department of neurological surgery at Loyola University
Stritch School of Medicine. There is no “definitive or reliable source
for rating the quality of overall neurosurgical care,” Origitano and
colleagues wrote in the journal article.
Researchers examined neurosurgical mortality data from 103 academic
medical centers in the University HealthSystem Consortium. Hospitals
with the worst mortality index tended to be level 1 trauma centers
with busy emergency departments (EDs) and a high percentage of Medicaid
patients.
A level 1 trauma center with a busy ED is more likely to treat severe
and complex cases such as head and spinal injuries from car accidents,
injuries from falls, or gunshot wounds. And the reason a high percentage
of Medicaid patients is associated with a high mortality index is
likely because Medicaid patients are more likely to have “poor access
to medical care, are poorly educated in health and hygiene, are uninsured
and present only once their symptoms have become severe,” the researchers
wrote.
The study also found that in hospitals with the lowest mortality
index, at least 87% of the neurosurgical cases were elective in nature.
Elective surgery includes cases such as back surgery or decompression
of a pinched nerve. Patients deemed to be at too high a risk do not
undergo the surgery. By contrast, nonelective surgery for such conditions
as head injuries and spine infections generally has to be done even
when the risks are high.
Researchers cited several other problems with rating systems. For
example, report cards typically lump neurology and neurosurgery into
one category: neurosciences. “Although both services treat many of
the same pathological processes, their performance at any given institution
is by no means shared,” the researchers wrote. “This can be misleading
if the neurology aspects of the rating system misrepresent the neurosurgical
service or vice versa.”
Another common practice is using reputation as one of the main ranking
criteria. This practice “is at best subjective,” the researchers wrote,
also noting that misleading information in report cards and rakings
“may falsely direct patients and their families to hospitals providing
a lower level of neurosurgical care, or direct them away from hospitals
providing a high level of neurosurgical care.”
— Source: Loyola University Health System
A-Life Medical Exec Named CFO of the Year by San Diego Business Journal
A-Life Medical, Inc, a provider of computer-assisted coding products
and services to the healthcare industry, recently announced that Jaye
Connolly, who serves as chief financial officer (CFO) and chief operating
officer (COO), has been named CFO of the Year in the private company
category of the 2009 San Diego Business Journal
CFO of the Year awards program.
Winners of the third annual CFO of the Year awards were selected
according to company size and span each of the following categories:
nonprofit, government agency, private company, and public company.
Nominees were judged on criteria that included contribution to financial
growth, positive impact on other areas of the organization, career
achievement, personal character, and community involvement.
Connolly joined A-Life in 2005 as CFO and was promoted to the additional
post of COO this year, managing all day-to-day activities of A-Life
Medical.
— Source: A-Life Medical
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