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Geisinger to Launch eICU

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:08:43 +0000

Geisinger Health System (Danville, Pa.) has entered an agreement with Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics to launch an eICU program. According to the company, the eICU program combines early warning alerts and remote monitoring technology to connect off-site critical care specialists with intensive care unit (ICU) patients and their bedside care teams. Geisinger Health System is one of the nation’s largest integrated health services organizations. Serving more than two million residents throughout central and northeastern Pennsylvania, the physician-led organization is at the forefront of the country’s rapidly emerging electronic health records movement.

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MidlandHR’s iTrent powers Ofgem’s HR and payroll

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:08:44 +0000

Ofgem has renewed its contract with MidlandHR for a further four years, upgrading to a hosted, fully integrated iTrent solution encompassing a wide range

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One-on-One With Capital Health CIO Gene Grochala, Part I

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:08:05 +0000

Mercer County, N.J.-based Capital Health – a two-hospital, 589-bed regional health network, including an ambulatory facility – recently completed the implementation of an EMR from Boston-based Keane. Comprised of Mercer and Fuld hospitals in Trenton, N.J. and the Capital Health in Hamilton outpatient facility, the organization is expanding, with construction underway for a new hospital in Hopewell Township, N.J. as well as an expansion of services at its Fuld hospital, both scheduled to be completed by 2011. Add to all that the goal of qualifying for HITECH stimulus funds and it’s no wonder CIO Gene Grochala has his hands full. Recently, HCI Editor-in-Chief caught up Grochala to talk about how he’s managing all these challenges. GUERRA: When did you go live on Keane? GROCHALA: It was April Fools’ Day 2009, a few months ago, though we signed the contract in 2007. GUERRA: Take me back to the 2006 timeframe and tell me how the conversation started. GROCHALA: In 2006, we were running HBOC Series. GUERRA: And they were bought by McKesson, right? GROCHALA: That’s right. We had it running in two different hospitals, and we had that primarily as our orders results documentation system, but we had a series of other systems that were independent – pharmacy, OR, ER. We went to Beacon Partners out of Massachusetts and we asked them to help us develop a three-year IT plan. We got together our physicians, nurses, financial department and we went offsite. We did this over a couple of months and laid out what a typical day in the life of somebody at the hospital would be to figure out what kind of information we needed to bring together. With that, we created a very nice document, and it really showed we wanted a single-source vendor. The people we had brought together wanted to have a comprehensive view of information in the form of an online electronic medical record, and they really wanted a big system that communicated patient data easily and transparently. They didn’t say it had to be without interfaces or integration, but they wanted it to be transparent for themselves, and the technical problems were on us. With that, we took the document to our board and asked for some capital funding to go out and search for another vendor, another product which was more state-of-the-art. We looked at a lot of vendors and did site visits, primarily it was clinicians that went. We did have some IT representation but IT was in the background because we really wanted the end user to pick the system. I believe it was our director of nursing informatics who found the Keane system, while at the same time we were building a $700 million hospital. So, my director told us to do more with less. That is, we couldn’t go out and spend $50 million on a clinical information system. We had to find something that would do the job, but also have some real ROI. It has to be reasonable, but it also had to deliver. Coincidently, myself and three other people from the organization were going for a Patient Safety Fellowship at the American Hospital Association. So, we were really focused on patient safety at that time. We were also three years into our first CPOE system. Again, it was more of a standalone system. It was really for medication only and we had about 45 percent utilization on CPOE for medication. We’re still at that figure. So again, we wanted total CPOE, including diagnostic orders as well as our pharmacy orders. So, with all this in mind, we brought Keane in and found it to be it a diamond in the rough. We found it to be a sleeper. We kept asking, “Why don’t they market this stronger? Why don’t they have a bigger presence in the marketplace?” I think they are like 12 th in the clinical systems and acute care settings, and they’re just really happy with what they have and very proud of it. Every time we threw a question at them or a problem at them, they would bring the system in and show us how they handle the issues. We were still disbelieving. We then put a criteria list together, about 100 points of things that we wanted out of a system, a quick checklist, and they scored – again this was done by the clinicians – 93 out of 100. Pretty good score, better than I did in college. (laughing) GUERRA: What was your budget for the project? GROCHALA: We were trying to keep it under $5 million for two hospitals as a project budget, not just what we spent for software. GUERRA: That cut a few contenders out right there? GROCHALA: Yes, that’s true. We were not going to look at the high-end guys. GUERRA: Do you still use some McKesson products? GROCHALA: Yes. GUERRA: Tell me about your software environment now. You said you have some McKesson products, you’ve got Keane, can you give me the lay of the land? GROCHALA: Well, we really wanted to focus on clinical applications, so we left our admissions, registration, medical records, and billing in place. You have to think of the patient flow for billing admissions and medical records, the DRG coding, we didn’t want to touch that. We really focused on orders and results, clinical documentation, vitals, EMRs, pharmacy CPOE, electronic medication administration that works right out of the box with any kind of Palm or Blackberry, and we wanted the single comprehensive view of patient data. So, while we taught a physician or a nurse how to use it in a hospital, the physician could use it in his office, the physician could use it in his house. We wanted to make sure that once they were taught, they would know how to use everything. In the past, we had done a lot of our own Web development. When they came out of the hospital, they saw one view of the patient data, when they went home, it was a Web-enabled product. We wanted to get away from that and have one product be what they saw in the hospital as well as what they saw in their house or in their office. GUERRA: Tell me more about the software environment. GROCHALA: We still have an independent system running in the emergency room. GUERRA: When you say ‘independent’ what do you mean? GROCHALA: The OR system is Mediware Perioperative, the emergency room system is from a company called EMA. They’re out of Livingston, N.J., and the product is called EDIM. Pharmacy is Mediware. CPOE is Mediware. Lab is a big one, OpusLab. GUERRA: Who do you have PACS from? GROCHALA: Radiology is from a company called Dynamic Imaging. It’s been purchased by GE, and cardiology PACS is Philips. GUERRA: And RIS? GROCHALA: We really don’t have an RIS. We’re pretty much satisfied. We satisfy their needs with in-house programming. (Between the PACS and then the transcription system.) GUERRA: You said CPOE is not through Keane? GROCHALA: No, not yet; that’s where we’re going. GUERRA: Just from the sound of it, you’ve got a pretty complex environment. Would you like to reduce the number of vendors you work with? GROCHALA: It is hard to get there, but that is where we’re going. We actually have contracted for these other products, like pharmacy CPOE and the EMR, with Keane. It’s price protected in the contract. We just went live in April. For two hospitals with a lot of applications, we’ve got over 2,200 people trained and over 400 physicians trained. Two weeks after we went live, I took a trip to Tampa, Fla., and my phone wasn’t ringing. It was pretty quiet. GUERRA: So it’s gone well. GROCHALA: Yes. No one is screaming for us to throw it out or accusing us of getting the wrong system. Now we’re trying different hardware at the point of care, and that’s a real challenge in itself. Nobody ever seems to be happy with whatever you pick, there’s always an issue. But going down the single-source-vendor path, we want to minimize the number of vendors without jeopardizing patient care, because these niche vendors do their jobs very well, like the operating room and the lab. It’s really hard for a big vendor to replicate everything that they do. In a perfect world, we will have probably 80 percent of our applications on Keane for the comprehensive medical record. We’ll always have an independent PACS system. I think everybody else in the world will, too. We’re struggling with the emergency room system now, in that we have a system and we’re talking to Keane about trying to get the emergency room over to the Keane product. Keane has a product development effort going on right now for CCHIT certification, so we’ll have a personal health record in there, bar coding electronic medical record, EMR medication administration record, and all of that kind of stuff. It’s all sitting there. It’s just a matter of us taking it out of price protection, buying it, then starting the next phase of implementation. Part II Coming Soon

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One-on-One With Janet Dillione, CEO, Health Services Business Unit, Siemens Healthcare, Part III

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:08:51 +0000

Coming in at number five in this year’s HCI 100 , Siemens Healthcare is clearly a powerhouse among the industry’s vendors. What’s more, the organization is one of only two vendors that offer core clinical functionality to hospitals, such as EMR and CPOE, while also playing heavily in the PACS, RIS and modality space (the other being GE Healthcare IT ). Recently, HCI Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra had a chance to chat with CEO Janet Dillione about where the company stands – and is going – in the industry’s HITECH-fueled environment. ( Part I , Part II ) GUERRA: Let’s talk about HITECH a little bit. You have a representative on one of the workgroups, Charlene Underwood, correct? DILLIONE: Yes, we do. GUERRA: So, that’s nice to have somebody on the inside. Some of your competitors weren’t quite so fortunate. Was it important that you get someone involved? DILLIONE: I think all the vendors probably wanted to be well-placed, and we were delighted when Charlene got the call. I think it’s more reflective of the respect the industry has for Charlene and what she’s done over the years and her reputation. She’s a smart lady with a tremendous amount of integrity. GUERRA: Let’s talk a little bit about the current state of certification which obviously is going to have a huge impact on a company like Siemens. At the last Policy Committee meeting, there was a proposal from the certification workgroup in which they recommended moving the criteria creation portion out of CCHIT and onto HHS. So it would be HHS certification, with CCHIT one of many entities doing testing against those criteria. There was also discussion that there was going to be a gap analysis between the current CCHIT certification and what would become HHS certification, with CCHIT performing that gap analysis. As someone leading a major vendor, how do you handle all this uncertainty when you have a business to run, with many customers looking to you to make sure they’re on a certified product? DILLIONE: That’s a great question. I have to say, I was a little bit surprised with some of the recent messages out of the workgroup, but what we have said and the message we have given R&D is, “Look, let’s not get overly analytical here. There are some top levels absolutely intractable, unavoidable musts, and they all have to do with patient safety, quality. So make sure that we have our tightly integrated, well-delivered, high quality medication reconciliation, e-prescribing, quality reporting. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t worry about the little teeny detail that might come out of meaningful use or whatever the final certification process is. Lean into the wind, hunt big game, make sure the big things are tackled and tackled well, and make sure our customers are well-positioned.” We’re putting a lot of emphasis right now on the medication ordering process, CPOE. We’re very fortunate in that when we built Soarian, we embedded analytics into it. So we have a very sophisticated analytics engine right inside. We think we are extremely well-positioned on the quality reporting area in both Soarian and Invision because of our data warehousing. So, I’m trying to keep folks focused on the big game. Don’t get distracted by some of the smaller topics that could pop in or pop out of the final meaningful use requirements. We’ve been having monthly webcasts for our customers. Everything we hear, we pass on . We’re pretty conscious of the fact that a lot of the material we produce we know our customers will use with their boards, and that’s fine. Every customer is getting a personal visit and a personal EHR assessment, and we’re giving them the same messages. “Here’s the big game. No matter what variation we see come out of Washington, these topics have never moved, and they’re going to be a part of it. So, let’s get going and make sure we have these things secured.” GUERRA: If you could speak to the certification workgroup is there any message you would want to give them? DILLIONE: They think the vendors are these for-profit, aggressive characters, and that we’ll survive and thrive no matter what. But when I talk to the folks in Washington, my message typically is for them to forget about us for a second and to think about the providers, the CIOs, CMOs and CNOs who are in the healthcare system trying to do patient care. It’s tough doing that while at the same time trying to figure out meaningful use and certification, not to mention that they also have 5010 and ICD-10 flying at them. It’s important that the folks in Washington keep in mind just how much software will be flying into these health systems, because ICD-10 is not just a clinical system, it’s everything. Every system is going to get affected and get upgraded. So think of the extraordinary impact this is going to have, not just on the IT organization, but also the clinicians and the other end users that have to help support the roll out of those upgraded systems. So that’s pretty much my consistent message. “Take a step back, understand the environment into which we deliver, and don’t lose sight of what else is coming at them.” GUERRA: You have three products that have ’07 CCHIT certification. There’s currently a total of only three companies and products that have ’08 certification. I would imagine that’s a dead deal at this point. Nobody’s going to be working through that process until they find out what’s going on with HHS Certification. Does that make sense? DILLIONE: Yes and, again, our products are certified through 2010. So, there is no need for us to do anything. GUERRA: Do you have any advice for our CIO readers on how they should be navigating these waters? DILLIONE: One of the councils we’ve been giving to our CIOs is this cannot just be your topic. It’s a topic for the health system. Your boards have to be informed and understand the implications of what’s happening out here in the market. Again, don’t try to do this as a lone soldier. This is a health system initiative, and it has to be approach that way. It’s not just the CIO, it’s the CMO, the CNO, the COO, it’s important to have an executive team that understands they have this to do. Another issue is that the industry will have to figure out how to solve the potential shortage of informatics analysts out there to support some of this clinical transformation. GUERRA: Have you been getting a lot of calls from customers about certification who want to make sure you’re going to help them? Is that where the bulk of your energy is going to be spent or is there actually going to be a lot of new business? DILLIONE: I think the good news is our customers expect it, they’re not asking it because they simply expect it. I mean, SMS and now Siemens always has had a strong heritage of being there for our customers with regulatory support and things that affect the industry, and we invest heavily in standards and regulatory council internally. That’s why we were fortunate enough to get people on the workgroups in Washington. I mean, our folks are expected to be industry participants. I don’t see the volume of new business, necessarily. I see almost a little bit of waiting. I think the market is waiting for a little bit more clarity on exactly what’s going to happen. So, I think a lot of firms who stocked up are somewhat surprised that they potentially have some bench. I don’t think folks expected that. Whether or not that bubble bursts when Washington comes out and says, “This is it. This is final,” is anybody’s guess. We’ll see.

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10 Workplace Motivation Commandments that All Leaders Must Follow

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:08:23 +0000

If you want your employees to shower your company with success… apply these Ten Commandments, help your existing employees find their motivation…

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Dealing With Drug and Alcohol Dependencies in Alberta Workplaces

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:08:59 +0000

The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission receives many inquiries from employers, employees, job applicants and unions about drug and alcohol testing and about the employer’s duty to accommodate drug and alcohol dependencies in the workplace. Courts and human rights tribunals have acknowledged that drug and alcohol dependencies are medically recognised disabilities under human rights […]

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Managers have difficulty giving feedback, weak on leadership and innovation, says study

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:08:49 +0000

TORONTO - (April 9th, 2009) Leadership, innovation and giving ongoing feedback are some of the biggest weaknesses displayed by leaders in North American workplaces, says a study.

The Beacon Group, a leading advising firm in the field of organizational development, asked mid and senior management leaders in the US and Canada to rate their managers, peers and their own performance. Leaders rated their co-workers using 12 basic competencies that included ethics & integrity, customer focus, accountability, teamwork, decision making, communication, leadership, functional excellence, results focus, personal development, innovation and coaching. The study analyzed over 10,000 individual surveys submitted over the past 5 years.

The average performance score across all categories was 63%.

The weakest categories of performance for leaders were leadership (62%), innovation (61%) and ongoing performance feedback (60%).

“Ongoing performance feedback and coaching on the job is something leaders at many companies struggle with,” said Michael Sitayeb, Director Product Development & Marketing for The Beacon Group.

“It’s easier to provide feedback within a structured performance feedback system with regular reviews. However, employees also expect more frequent coaching in between performance reviews,” added Sitayeb. “Leaders struggle with that. They struggle with the sensitivity and frequency of these coaching events”.

“Many large corporations provide specific training on giving timely and constructive feedback. It’s a serious issue of concern” said Sitayeb.

Innovation and leadership were two other elements that leaders had difficulty with. Troubling signs, given that employees frequently cite these two categories to be more important during difficult economic times.

Leaders frequently overstated their leadership and innovation abilities when conducting self-assessments. Leaders demonstrated the biggest self perception to peer evaluation gap in these categories as well.

Leaders performed best in the categories of ethics & integrity (68%), customer focus (66%) and focus on results (65%) according to the survey.

“There isn’t much disparity between perception and reality in the top performance categories for leaders. Leaders generally know where they stand on these issues” said Sitayeb.

“But on the poorest performing categories of innovation and leadership, there is some misalignment. Companies should better define leadership and innovation according to their set of organizational values and core competencies”.

The Beacon Group is a leading advising firm in the field of organizational development. Companies across various industries have used The Beacon Group’s assessment products and advising services to leverage their investment in Human Capital. The Beacon Group specializes in Employee Surveys, 360 Feedback Assessments, Early Talent Identification (ETI), Management Training, and Performance Management Systems. Clients including Mercedes-Benz, Aeroplan, Xerox, Sony and SAP have used The Beacon Group’s services to grow their thriving businesses.

For media inquiries please speak to Michael Sitayeb at 1-866-240-3948 or email at e-mail protected from spam bots.

This press release was distributed through eMediawire by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company
listed above.

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How to Negotiate For More Flexible Working Hours

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:08:13 +0000

The most wished-for change in employees working circumstances is to have more flexible working hours. Most employees are hesitant to ask fearing that it could jeopardize their job. Follow these steps toimprove your chances of getting a favourable response plus greater job security.

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Jack Welch: ‘HR, Get Out of the Picnic Business’

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:08:17 +0000

“How many out there (of perhaps 6,000 HR managers in the audience) are perceived by your organizations as equal in importance to the CFO?” Jack Welch asked. About 10 percent believed they were. “That’s not enough,” he said.

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myStaffingPro President Offers Insight on the Applicant Tracking System Market

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:08:04 +0000

Bob Schulte, myStaffingPro president and CEO, discusses the importance of an applicant tracking system for improved hiring and onboarding efficiencies (PRWEB Aug 28, 2009)

Read the full story at http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2009/08/prweb2806624.htm

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