Industry Insight

NemoursOne EHR System Wins 2010 HIMSS Award of Excellence

HIMSS recently announced that Nemours, a healthcare system for children operating in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida, is a 2010 recipient of its HIMSS Davies Organizational Award of Excellence. The award is presented to healthcare systems and facilities that effectively use HIT such as EHRs to improve the safety and quality of patient care. Sentara Healthcare of Virginia is also a winner this year.

All Nemours clinics and the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children are linked to NemoursOne across four states. Nemours Children’s Hospital in Central Florida will be online when it opens in 2012. NemoursOne, in combination with its data warehouse, has developed a streamlined medication reconciliation process, a challenge nationwide, with an outpatient systemwide rate currently at 88%.

— Source: Nemours

 

Cincinnati, Detroit Awarded Final Two Beacon Community Slots

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that Cincinnati and Detroit are the two final pilot communities selected under the new Beacon Community Program that is using HIT to help tackle leading health problems in communities across the country. At the same time, the program will allow HHS to look for new ways to share the lessons learned by funded communities and, working with local and national healthcare foundations, develop support networks for other communities that want to employ similar innovative approaches.

The two awardees, Greater Cincinnati HealthBridge, Inc in Cincinnati and Southeastern Michigan Health Association in Detroit, join 15 other projects selected in May for the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program. Beacon projects are expected to initially create dozens of new jobs in each community that pay an average of $70,000 per year for a total of more than  1,100 jobs up front while accelerating development of a nationwide HIT infrastructure that will eventually employ tens of thousands of Americans.

The Beacon Community awards are part of an overall $100 billion federal government investment in science, innovation, and technology the administration is making through the recovery act to spur domestic job creation in emerging industries and create a long-term foundation for economic growth. There has been significant interest in the program, with more than 100 applications for the final two Beacon program slots.

Greater Cincinnati HealthBridge will serve a 16-county area spanning three states surrounding the greater Cincinnati area. Under the Beacon program, HealthBridge and its partners will use its advanced health information exchange program to develop new quality improvement and care coordination initiatives focusing on patients with pediatric asthma and adult diabetes and encouraging smoking cessation. For example, not only will physicians and other providers receive more timely and accurate information about when their patients experience a medical complication or are hospitalized, but they will also have new support from care managers to use this information effectively to intervene early and assist patients in managing their health and avoiding further complications. This program will provide better clinical information and IT decision-support tools to physicians, health systems, federally qualified health centers, and critical access hospitals. As part of the Beacon program, this HIT community collaboration will provide patients and their families with timely access to data, knowledge, and tools to make informed decisions and manage their own health and healthcare.

The Southeastern Michigan Health Association and its partners in the greater Detroit area will use HIT tools and strategies to prevent and better manage diabetes, which affects a large percentage of residents of the city of Detroit. This community collaboration will leverage existing and new technologies across healthcare settings to improve the availability of patient information at the point of care, regardless of where the patient is in the health system. Furthermore, the community will provide practical support to physician practices to help clinicians, nurses, and others make the best use of electronic health data to catch potential health complications before they arise.

— Source: Health and Human Services

 

A-Life Medical, Inc Promotes President Jaye Connolly to Additional CEO Post

A-Life Medical, Inc, a provider of computer-assisted coding (CAC) products and services to the healthcare industry, recently announced that Jaye Connolly has been promoted to the additional post of CEO, effective immediately. Connolly had been serving as president since April and will continue in that role. Connolly was previously chief operating officer and chief financial officer at A-Life Medical for more than five years.

In addition to her role as CEO and president, Connolly will continue as a member of the board of directors for both A-Life Medical and A-Life Hospital, a wholly owned subsidiary of A-Life Medical.

— Source: A-Life Medical, Inc