What’s your perspective on the current reimbursement conundrum in which physicians find themselves?

Information technology (IT) solutions are playing perhaps the most vital role in fulfilling the goals of the 100,000 Lives Campaign initiated by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). IT supports four proven interventions in the critical care setting, interventions that are, bottom line, bolstering patient safety in the hospital and reducing hospital deaths by underpinning evidence-based protocols for acute care clinicians.

Sometimes you just can’t get away from a thing. A series of coincidences sprinkle your week with irony, you’re bombarded with ads for the same product, or maybe it’s bumping into the same acquaintance over and over at all the places you frequent. Funny at first, then kind of spooky.

Many process improvements have recently been developed and implemented at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), part of a 16-hospital network in southwest Pennsylvania. As part of the widespread improvement program, the hospital’s approach to critical care was redesigned in an effort to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Good technology strategies have served LaPorte Hospital and Health Services well, and continue to provide a backbone for the hospital’s national reputation for quality.


Patient safety is on everyone's mind today. In the lab setting, what types of errors are most prevalent in your opinion — what do hospitals struggle with the most in the area of blood gas testing?
There are basically four types of errors that can occur in the analytical process for blood gas testing: (1) specimen mislabeling, which means there’s been a mismatch of the patient ID and the specimen; (2) improper mixing of the specimen; (3) adding air bubbles in the sample; and (4) samples delayed in transport that begin to separate and aren't good for blood gas analysis.

 Things are looking up at Parkview Community Hospital Medical Center, Riverside, CA’s only remaining nonprofit hospital. Vital signs for core services — emergency, maternal-child, general and orthopedic surgery, and seniors — are strong, and getting stronger.
The 193-bed facility's staff has 900 full- and part-time workers, including 350 physicians in 42 specialties and subspecialties. Together they provide comfort and critical care to Riverside's diversified urban population of nearly 300,000 people.


One of the best strategies Greg Martin uses to make friends is to find his enemies — at least when it comes to fostering adoption of new technology among potentially techno-phobish clinicians, or those resistant to change. Martin, who is CIO at Arnot Ogden Medical Center in upstate Elmira, NY, placed value on recruiting skeptics into a major decision-making process and ended up with the makings of a fan club.

We live and work in a fast-paced world struggling in overdrive to stay organized as we accumulate more intelligence and quite simply, more stuff. It’s a world where attention spans are short, immediate gratification is demanded, patience lasts for only 15 seconds, bullet points, sound bites and video feeds suffice as in-depth content and plug-and-play functions as second fiddle only to the on/off switch. And only barely.

Well before flat-panel televisions became all the rage in the consumer market, healthcare facilities began singing the praises of the ultra-thin displays that tout eye-popping visual clarity.
And as the costs of flat-panel medical grade and general-use displays have dropped considerably, manufacturers are now competing for buyers’ hearts and minds on a host of issues such as image quality and connectivity. Today, sophisticated buyers are talking contrast ratio, pixels and processing speeds.
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