All posts by Amie Podolak

Magnet Designation and TeleTracking – No Small Coincidence

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Magnet DesignationTeleTracking proudly recognizes client hospitals’ significant Magnet Designation achievement!

The Magnet Recognition Program® was launched in the early 1990s by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. It recognizes healthcare organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice.

Developed by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)– Magnet recognition is one of the most significant achievements a healthcare organization can receive for nursing excellence.  The first Magnet hospital was designated in 1994. Today, more than 300 hospitals in the country hold this honor.

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Categories: Overcrowding, Patient Flow

Do Your Healthcare IT Systems Improve Outcomes and Cost? Prove It!

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HISTalk HealthcareHISTalk Blog Time Capsule asks whether Hospital Healthcare IT Systems improve outcomes and reduce costs. They should. Here’s proof!

If you’re involved in Healthcare IT, you’re likely already a fan of the HISTalk Blog.  For those who aren’t,  HISTalk was started by a hospital clinical department head whose original intent was to collect his thoughts about what was going on in healthcare IT.   Since its humble launch in 2003, the site has grown to one of the most well-read resources for major industry developments, and today, visitors exceed the 5 million mark!

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Categories: EMR / Healthcare IT

The Brave New World of Healthcare & Future of Disease Prevention

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Healthcare FutureIt’s increasingly evident that disease prevention takes more than jogging a few miles a week and cutting back on the pork rinds.

Yet prevention is what some large health insurers are literally banking on to save the U.S. healthcare system.

Healthcare futurist Clement Bezold recently sketched several possible scenarios for tomorrow’ s healthcare, the most likely being the Patient-Centered Medical Home, in which constantly updated electronic medical records promote more timely preventative care, and employer-sponsored health insurance shifts to health insurance exchanges where employees move to high deductibles and catastrophic coverage.

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Categories: Future of Healthcare

Can Real-Time Capacity Management Save Hospitals?

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Real TimeCan real-time – as in real-time capacity management – save hospitals time and resources?

It was disappointing to learn the other day that the dream of time travel was dashed with the turn of a single screwdriver.  (SeeFaster than light neutrinos may have just been disproven.)

It turns out that reports of neutrinos moving faster than light speed were the result of a loose cable between a GPS receiver and a computer at the famous CERN laboratory in Switzerland -[ScienceInsider].  Earlier reports that neutrinos were recorded moving 60 nanoseconds faster than light speed prompted physicists to speculate that neutrinos could be sent back in time.

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Categories: Author: Dennis Morabito, Real-Time Capacity Management, Real-Time Locating System (RTLS)

AHA Solutions Patient Flow Challenges Report: Worth Reading!

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Bed ManagementAHA Solutions Patient Flow Challenges Report: The discharge process, bed management, patient flow and tracking systems

If you haven’t already read the AHA Solutions Patient Flow Challenges report, I encourage you to do so!

[Note: link takes you to AHA page where you can download an executive summary, replay a webinar and request a copy of the report.]

This report puts a spotlight on one of the biggest operational challenges in healthcare –patient flow – as cited by you, the professionals tasked with running the nation’s hospitals.

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Categories: Bed Management, Overcrowding, Patient Flow

The “Catch-22” of EMRs

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Catch 22 EMRsJoseph Heller’s darkly hilarious wartime novel, “Catch-22,” skewered military bureaucracy through the eyes of a bombardier who couldn’t make his mission quota and go home because the quota kept getting higher.

Catch-22 is now part of the lexicon. It’s defined as a “condition or regulation which prevents the resolution of a problem.”

That describes the situation for many hospitals regarding Electronic Medical Records. To get a piece of the $20 plus billion dollar government incentive pie for adopting EMRs, the hospitals must meet an array of measurements proving that they are using this IT in a meaningful way.

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Categories: EMR / Healthcare IT, Real-Time Capacity Management

Hallway Boarding: An Unnecessary Ethical Dilemma Faced by Hospitals

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Hallway Boarding‘Hallway Boarding’ is a quaint euphemism for parking sick people in hallways until their room is ready.

It used to be done in Emergency Departments when no in-patient beds were available. Now some facilities are “admitting” ED patients to the hallways of inpatient units.

In pain, under stress, wearing gowns open at the rear with a port-a-potty for a bathroom, these patients are the victims of turf wars caused by hospital overcrowding.

The hospitals say they want to relieve pressure in the ED so patients needing urgent care can be treated. But they also admit they want to bring the overcrowding problem to inpatient units. They reason that the patient’s presence forces nurses and others to perform more timely discharges, bed turnovers and admissions.

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Categories: Overcrowding, Patient Flow

The Hospital Efficiency Imperative: Free New Orleans Symposium!

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NOLA SymposiumFree in NOLA: “The Hospital Efficiency Imperative”

The words “free” and “New Orleans” seldom appear in the same sentence, but here’s one time that they do.

TeleTracking is offering a “free” symposium this month in “NOLA” on managing the hospital enterprise in real-time. It’s billed as “The Hospital Efficiency Imperative,” and rightly so, because we are now previewing in the U.S. Supreme Court what will inevitably happen to hospitals if they don’t decide for themselves how to become more efficient.

Registration is open for the conference being held April 19 & 20 at the Astor Crowne Plaza.  The conference will cover trends and solutions in patient throughput and overcrowding, asset management and inter-hospital patient transfers.

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Categories: Real-Time Capacity Management

Critical Care Nurses: Transfer Center ‘Point Guards’

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Hoop DreamsIn honor of March Madness!

NURSES:  Point Guards in the Fight Against Hospital Diversions

There’s no question that automated hospital Transfer Centers are saving lives. What is often overlooked is the amount of revenue they generate, and the important role nurses are playing in evolving the Transfer Center.

Critical care nurses are the “point guards” in the most successful Transfer Centers around the country. In fact, a key “Best Practice” for implementing a successful transfer center operationcalls for critical care nurses to man the Transfer Center on a 24/7 basis because they are so adept at making fast, smart decisions regarding patient care.

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Categories: Author: Dennis Morabito, Bed Management, Patient Flow, Transfer / Referral Center

Clinical vs. Operational Platforms: Taking the Bull By the Horns

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Clinical vs. Operational PlatformsSo, we thought we’d jump in with both feet and take on thechallenge of clinical (EMRs) vs. operational (capacity, optimization, throughput) platforms.

While the adoption of electronic health records has been good for healthcare, it has also created many additional stresses on already burdened caregivers.   A chaotic environment remains on the operational side of hospitals because of deep vendor and solution fragmentation with little to no integration.

A lot of bull has been slung around – plus around $20 billion in cold, hard cash – concerning the impact of Electronic Medical Records on healthcare.

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Categories: Operational Efficiency, Real-Time Capacity Management