The 4th Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress is scheduled for December 8-10 in Washington, DC. Organizers say the event will center on "the next generation of innovation and technology as defined through the analysis of a focused and growing set of best resources for innovation and creativity."
U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee has called for a congressional investigation into medical-device manufacturers and operators who use unproven "energy medicine" machines to exploit patients. Inslee said his request was in reaction to a Seattle Times investigation called "Miracle Machines." The series revealed how manufacturers and practitioners profit from treating people with the unproven machines, some of them potentially dangerous, others illegal. They have used these devices to misdiagnose diseases and divert critically ill people from life-saving care, as well as drain their bank accounts.
The market for Smartphones is becoming fierce, with Blackberry and the new iPhone competing for consumer attention. Now Palm is attempting to make a reentry into the market with the new Treo Pro. The Treo Pro is slimmer and more elegant than current models, and its larger keyboard and screen that is flush with the phone's chassis make it more user-friendly than Palm's old calculator-like design, according to this New York Times article.
Representatives from the Medical Group Management Association, the American Medical Association, and America's Health Insurance Plans say three years is not enough time to transition from International Classification of Diseases Version 9 to ICD-10. The Department of Health and Human Services recently issued a proposed rule that would require healthcare providers to adopt ICD-10 code sets for electronic health transactions by October 2011. AHIP and MGMA said their organizations support transitioning to ICD-10 but object to the proposed schedule. They are pushing for a two-year transition to version 5010 of the X12 transaction standards—a few months more than HHS' proposed deadline.
Rochester (NY) General Hospital has installed a silent call-system that combines vibrating pagers, communication badges, and a light-system that eliminates intrusive overhead pages. The system was developed by Special Care Systems LLC, a company that focuses solely on healthcare communications.
I had the good fortune last week to tour Griffin Hospital, in Derby, CT, a winner of this year's Top Leadership Teams in Healthcare. Griffin has good patient outcomes and physician relations for sure, but it attracts patients from well beyond its target region—and gives tours to hospital leadership teams from around the world—because it has embraced the Planetree model of patient-centered care.
At Griffin, leadership decided many years ago that to be able to extend its mission to the community, all employees had to change fundamentally the way the hospital engages patients and delivers care, and that started by understanding at the deepest level what patients and their families want and need from their caregivers.
As I toured the facility, the byproducts of Griffin's transformation were striking. Despite being a 160-bed facility 10 miles outside of New Haven, Griffin doesn't have the atmosphere of a typical acute-care community hospital. It had many hotel-like touches: natural lighting, music in the lobby, private rooms, carpeting throughout the facility, and valet parking. But it also encouraged engagement with patients and their families: 24-hour visiting, open medical records, comfortable family rooms, signs reminding patients to ask doctors questions, and patient rooms that provide a line of sight to the nurses' station.
Even though these amenities improve care for all patients, they are especially important for those seeking care for elective but necessary procedures. These are the patients that choose to travel past other nearby hospitals to enjoy the comforts and care at Griffin. And no doubt that's how Griffin improves its margin. What's more, the collective power of all of these changes creates a strong and lasting message to patients, family, and hospital staff. The patient comes first. This singular focus has over time improved Griffin's organizational culture to the point that the hospital has been named one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For—nine years running.
As I walked the halls at Griffin, I was struck by how mature and honest a leadership team must be with itself to embark on this type of organizational evolution. After all, how many hospital CEOs would have been willing to acknowledge that they weren't really putting patients first? That everyone in the organization could do more to better care for patients and their families? That they must change?
The latest news out of the The Joint Commission is that new standards for culturally competent patient-centered care are on the way. I wonder whether similar international standards could be on the way from JCI. For global destination hospitals, the lessons from Griffin should take on even greater significance. New technology and a well-trained medical staff just aren't enough to provide the care that patients expect. Reach out to patients today to find out what they want and then do your best to give it to them.