Coordinating surgical care means precise staff handoffs
In every OR, the complicated dance of surgical care coordination—the series of handoffs between stakeholders throughout the surgery lifecycle—is performed mainly in the background. Those stakeholders include physician offices, schedulers, preadmission testing, insurance verification, vendors, sterile processing, supply chain, anesthesia, and surgical staff. But what does it look like when…
Researchers are calling for better tracking of chronic diseases
Editor's Note There are new efforts underway to better harness electronic health record (EHR) data to track chronic diseases, as was done with tracking infectious diseases such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article discussing these efforts appeared in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice in October 2023.…
How health systems are using tech tools to make ORs more efficient
Most hospitals agree that they can better harness the data they are collecting from registration through discharge in order to streamline patient turnovers, reduce wait times, and improve patient and staff satisfaction, but there is still uncertainty about how best to turn massive quantities of data into better patient outcomes.…
Physicians spent more time in EHR with telehealth during pandemic
Editor's Note New research shows that physicians who used telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic spent increased time working in the electronic health record (EHR). The research findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine on October 30. Researchers studied the weekly EHR metadata of 1,052 physicians at the University of California…
AI-supported app improves physician time, patient communication
Editor's Note Physicians at the University of Kansas Health System are piloting an AI-based app called Abridge that captures feedback from the medical care team and transcribes it for patients, Fox4 August 9 reports. This AI-led process reportedly saved time on documentation while providing clear guidance for patients The new…
Primary care reminders key to timely follow up for cancer patients with abnormal screenings
Editor's Note Patient outreach efforts, including a reminder in the electronic health record (EHR) following an abnormal cancer screening, helped to ensure timely follow-up, a new investigative study in JAMA Network reports. This cluster randomized clinical trial, titled "A multilevel primary care intervention to improve follow-up of overdue abnormal cancer…
AI accurately predicts 30-day readmission risk
Editor's Note Researchers at New York University Langone Health, New York City, have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) computer program that predicts whether a newly discharged patient will be readmitted within 30 days, the June 7 HealthDay reports. The AI program, named “NYUTron,” is a large language model that works…
New EHR generative AI by Microsoft, Epic currently being piloted
Editor's Note On April 17, electronic health records (EHR) vendor Epic and Microsoft announced a partnership to train Azure OpenAI on a large collection of information so it can “asynchronously draft responses to patient messages for providers,” Becker’s Health IT May 25 reports. According to Becker's, there are four major…
Issues with EHR shown to contribute to diagnostic errors
Editor's Note A qualitative study funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and published in JAMA Network Open in April 2023 found that a majority of diagnostic errors are "at least partially caused by problems with electronic health records" (EHR), the American Organization for Nursing Leadership May 9…
Promising AI applications in healthcare: Chat GPT-4, natural language processing
Editor's Note Chat GPT-4, the latest version of an artificially intelligent chatbot, shows promising applications in healthcare, as reported by The New York Times on March 14. With greater accuracy and descriptive abilities, the chatbot was recently tested by Anil Gehi, MD, associate professor of medicine and cardiologist at the…
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