A long-awaited and highly critical federal government report on patient safety at Parkland Memorial Hospital will be released today at a special meeting of the hospital's board of managers. "We promised we would release it as soon as it was finished, and that's what we're doing," said Parkland spokeswoman April Foran. Two dozen teams of doctors, nurses, lawyers and other hospital employees have spent the last two weeks developing a plan to correct problems that federal healthcare inspectors said threatened patient safety at the Dallas County public hospital, she said. Investigators with the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found that Parkland put emergency room patients' lives at risk and failed to take sanitary measures, such as hand-washing, to prevent the spread of infection, according to an internal hospital memo circulated last week. Those were the most severe failures of nine regulatory violations found by CMS during a sweeping inspection of the hospital in July.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has filed a motion seeking to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Highmark that alleges UPMC has been misleading Highmark subscribers through advertising and other communications into thinking they were about to lose network access to UPMC doctors and hospitals. "Highmark should not be able to gag UPMC, leaving Highmark as the lone public voice on end-of-contract issues -- particularly when Highmark's own communications are the ones misleading patients and the public," said UPMC spokesman Paul Wood in a release. "UPMC's public communications have been accurate, ethically and socially responsible, and consistent with the provisions of the contracts." Highmark spokesman Michael Weinstein said the insurer would review the U.S. District Court filing, and that meanwhile, "we continue to urge UPMC to cease the delaying tactics and get back to the table to negotiate a new agreement with Highmark, which is what the community clearly wants." The Highmark-UPMC contract expires in July, with a one-year run-out period to follow. The sides disagree about whether access to UPMC physicians will also be covered during the run-out period.
The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to test commercial cloud-based collaboration tools to improve communications and reduce data breaches that have occurred from previous use of tools not approved by the department. The VA is looking for vendors that offer an established cloud-based offering for email, calendaring, and other collaboration tools that can integrate with the VA's existing Microsoft Exchange-based collaboration system, according to a request for information posted on FedBizOpps.gov. The current VA system includes Exchange calendaring, SharePoint, and Active Directory, which the department has said it may replace with a cloud-based system for 600,000 employees. In that effort, the department is looking for a contractor to help it migrate its entire backend email system--comprised of Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, an email archive system, BlackBerry software, and storage and back-up systems--to a hosted cloud environment, according to a request for information it posted online for potential contractors.
The Health IT Standards Committee has endorsed a single set of vocabulary standards and a single guide for putting them in place for each area of quality reporting measures, an accomplishment that some individuals and groups have been working on for 10 years. The domains include medications, labs and allergies. The committee will recommend to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to incorporate the vocabulary standards and implementation guides in certification criteria for electronic health records for stage 2 of meaningful use. Standards provide the common technical methods that can be installed in EHRs to support functions that improve care and help physicians and hospitals meet meaningful use. ONC has offered choices of vocabulary standards associated with some quality measures in stage one, according to John Halamka, MD, committee co-chair and CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
This week's news of Google's intent to acquire Motorola Mobility has led some to wonder whether Google might be setting itself up for a second chance to take a crack at the lucrative healthcare market, now that it appears that it intends to become a full-blown hardware competitor in the mobile device market. Certainly, while Google's most recent foray into the healthcare market met with disastrous results (the company closed Google Health due to lack of consumer interest), Google now has a chance to revive its fortunes by gaining greater access to Motorola's healthcare clients that already use products like the MC55A0-HC and the MC75A0-HC, which are handheld devices that Motorola designed specifically for use by doctors, nurses and other employees in the healthcare sector. Just last week, technology research firm ABI Research cited Motorola as one of three leading Wi-Fi infrastructure vendors focused on the potential for Wi-Fi in healthcare, and said Motorola stands to benefit from the expansion of existing networks and the increased adoption of Wi-Fi both in the U.S and around the world. The research firm estimates that the market for Wi-Fi access point hardware, software, and services will increase to $1.3 billion by 2016.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, one of Harvard's major teaching hospitals, is negotiating with a Stanford physician to become its next CEO. The board this week offered the job to Kevin Tabb, MD, CMO of Stanford Hospital and Clinics in California, according to two people close to the process who wish to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak. But, they cautioned, the board and Tabb are still working out salary and other details of his employment contract. Hospital officials would not comment yesterday. Late Wednesday, after a board meeting, chairman Stephen Kay e-mailed a statement to Beth Israel Deaconess employees saying that the board had closed in on a leading candidate. "In the next few days, you may hear or read in the media about who will be BIDMC's next president and CEO," he wrote. "Please know that while we are closer to naming a new leader, there are important steps the board and a leading candidate must take before this action becomes final."