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11 Hot Healthcare Buzzwords for 2011

 |  By cclark@healthleadersmedia.com  
   January 06, 2011

With rapid changes in healthcare comes a new vocabulary with terms and phrases every provider should know.

Culled from journal articles, conferences, blogs and other media, some of these phrases might not be all that new. But it's our bet that even if you've heard some of them before, you're going to hear a lot more references to them in 2011.

1. EHR-EMR-HIT Interoperability. These acronyms are among the most important to know and understand. The concept is that EHR (electronic health records), EMR (electronic medical records), and HIT (health information technology) use technology to connect providers' and patients' data and communication online. EMR and EHR are sometimes used interchangeably but they are distinct.

EHR is a complete, long-term computerized electronic record of a patient's care culled from any and all provider settings while the EMR is the electronic replacement of a paper chart and the record of a patient's history and care generated by one particular provider.

An EHR, also connects multiple providers, such as hospitals and clinicians, laboratories, and prescription and/or pharmacy histories, test results, and care notes for a particular patient.

Also see Meaningful Use, the phrase whose definition is specified in federal regulations governing dispersal of stimulus refunds and credits to providers who achieve it with their electronic record systems.

2. Creative Destruction. The oxymoronic phrase that's derived from economic theory refers to the healthcare idea that in order to create a new healthcare system, we will have to tear down the old one, as referenced in a Nov. 11 article about accountable care organizations in the New England Journal of Medicine by Robert Kocher, MD, and Nikhil R. Sahni of the McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform and the Engleberg Center for Health Care Reform.

Kocher and Sahni say that under the healthcare reform legislation "the next few years will be a period of what economists call “creative destruction”: our fragmented, fee-for-service health care delivery system will be transformed into a higher-quality, higher-productivity system with strong incentives for efficient, coordinated care.” 

3. HAIs --- Getting to Zero. This phrase also is not new to the lingo, but it is destined to become a hallway mantra in 2011, as healthcare-associated infections are about to be factored into how much hospitals receive in their reimbursement. Hospital-acquired infections are a leading cause of death, added cost, increased morbidity and length of stay. And they are often quite preventable.

4. Teachback. Because patients are sick, sleep-deprived, stressed, tired, distracted and confused, they don't understand much about what they're being told during their healthcare experience. That's why providers are increasingly being re-trained to take a lot more time to make sure patients and/or their authorized significant others and caregivers understand what they need to know to continue their recovery.

In many hospital and clinical settings, patients are being asked to repeat back what has been said to them to make sure they understand it, or "teach it back" to the provider. Patients are being given written instructions and asked to read those back too. A nod of the head is not okay.

5. Pink Fatigue or Pinkification. The plethora of pink – in commercialized products, quasi-athletic events, advertising, pink product placement – may result in overkill and a trivialization of the search for better treatment or a cure for breast cancer.

Some bloggers have rightfully asked whether pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken really send the right message. Pinkathon publicity campaigns also may tend to minimize the sometimes equally significant risks of obesity and heart disease these same patients.

6. Sat Scores. We're not talking about tests that measure scholastic aptitude. Increasingly heard in hospital hallways, clinic and physician waiting rooms, and even emergency departments---is whether the patient will give a positive answer when he or she is asked if the healthcare experience was satisfying. Providers soon will receive federal payments based on whether their satisfaction 'sat' scores were better than their competitors'.

Look for modifications to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey that ask even more detailed questions about length of wait times, and whether patients feel their care was well explained. Also anticipate better utilization of volunteers (think Walmart greeters) to ask if waiting patients would like something to read or drink, and improved access to entertainment or the web (movies, TV and internet access) to ease patients' anxiety while they are in a healthcare setting.

7. Alignment. This word means many things to many people, but in this context we're talking about standardization of equipment, procedures and supply purchases, programs, and policies.

Alignment can be considered a fighting word, because hospital systems with multiple facilities and autonomous programs that cater to individual physician or administrator preferences may balk at the imposition of limits. But systems that are steering full steam toward these goals believe that they will be the ones to succeed.

8. Respectful Crisis Management. Sometimes, providers make very big mistakes. But how healthcare systems respond to these unfortunate events can determine whether the next mistake is prevented, or whether it embitters staff, family, the public and the community in a toxic cloud of mistrust and blame.

This term actually represents a growing area of scientific research to find the best management strategies that provide productive responses to a critical healthcare error. Responses that unify the team to acknowledge and mitigate harm and prevent a similar mistake from occurring are the ones to adopt. No one benefits if those who made the mistake are so afraid, they won't dare explain what factors contributed to their making it.

9. Checklists, Checklists. Look for increasing agreement that these strategies – step-by-step protocols for catheter insertion or time-outs and counts in surgical procedures to prevent adverse events and infections. While there is some objection from providers who say that checklists' success are primarily attributable to a "Hawthorne" effect, (which holds that people perform better when they know they are being watched), don't expect those naysayers to block this trend.

10. Medical Apps. Whether it's on an iPhone, iPad or other mobile device, look for healthcare to be informed and prescribed, delivered, and monitored by doctors and patients using mobile apps. It might sound trivial to joke that "The App will see you now," but increasingly patients will use these devices to check and transmit their glucose levels, and physicians will use them to detect and treat abnormalities.

11. Medical Loss Ratio.
Affordable Care Act, insurance companies are now required to spend no more than 15% to 20% on administrative expenses such as
executive salaries, overhead, and marketing, and the rest must be spent on patient care and/or quality improvement. Moreover, they must be transparent about how they spend their money. The act covers plans that insure nearly 75 million insured Americans.

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