At one time or another, we all know what it’s like to be a patient sitting in an ED waiting room. From the waiting room to the exam area, and maybe even an inpatient stay, healthcare organizations are always striving to do anything they can to make the experience smoother and more comfortable for their patients. At King’s Daughters Medical Center, they have embraced MEDITECH Expanse, to make things easier for their staff and increase patient satisfaction.

Since 2009, ECRI Institute (formerly known as Emergency Care Research Institute) has released its annual list of top 10 patient safety concerns, highlighting issues in healthcare that we, as practitioners, may already know and should keep in mind.

This year’s list also included a set of technical concerns that ECRI raised, related to the problems and opportunities that come with the increased use of EHRs: test result management, early detection and treatment of sepsis, and physician burnout all made the list. 

In a constantly connected world, consumers are looking for ways to break down barriers between themselves and their providers. Recently, I sat down with Dr. William Dailey, CMIO at Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare (Clinton, MO), to hear about how organizations and individuals can use social media to connect with the hospital community, inside and outside of the facility’s walls.

MEDITECH Associate Vice President Cathy Turner was featured in Minority Nurse's blog called "The Latest Technology in Health Care." Turner, along with other industry thought leaders, gives her take on what technology is coming in the not-too-distant future and how it will impact nurses. 

At a time when financial pressures could lead to more hospital closures, it’s no surprise that the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference drew a full audience, to explore how our industry is responding to the growing demands of the patient as consumer.

Have you seen MEDITECH’s For Us, It’s Personal video on what the healthcare industry means to us? In the video, I shared that my sister passed away from sepsis following a bone marrow transplant related to leukemia. Like many others, my personal experiences contribute to my passion at work, and my after-hours engagement as a member of a patient advisory board.

MEDITECH recently introduced MEDITECH Greenfield, our new application development environment supported by RESTful APIs, including FHIR. Greenfield is an open space for customers and third-party developers to create and share applications that drive innovation, increase interoperability, and grow the value of their Expanse EHR.

In 2014, Parkview Medical Center realized that it needed to reduce its readmission rate significantly while also fixing a communication gap between home health care agencies and other post-acute facilities. To address these issues, my director and a team of other leaders joined together to pilot a new transition care center that went live in 2016.

Developing standards for healthcare is nothing new — in fact, you could say the concept of identifying quality measures started in the early 17th century, when a Hungarian Doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, championed handwashing in his clinic.

 As nurses, we know that patient care is not one-size-fits-all. Every patient has unique needs when it comes to determining the best course of treatment. But even with all of those unique patient needs, clinical documentation can be structured so that each patient gets the right individualized care while nurses use a standardized reporting system, ultimately saving nurses’ time.