Engage!

Nowadays, the term ‘healthcare innovation’ is becoming almost cliché. Everyone, it seems, is on the bandwagon to be known as an innovator, a disrupter. New companies and technologies are coming online faster than hospital management teams can adequately vet them.

Seven years ago, Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York, came to Allen Technologies with a challenge not uncommon to most hospitals. The 245-bed Northwell Health facility wanted to empower and engage its patients in their treatment. It was looking for innovative ideas – and sought a technology partner with the creative chops and an innovation track record to achieve it.

Diabetes statistics are alarming. Today there are an estimated 30 million diabetes cases in the United States of America alone, and it is one of our leading causes of death. Older Americans with diabetes are more likely to be in the emergency room, and a recent study found that nearly a third of those ED visits result in hospital admissions.

Discharge planning – or more precisely, the lack of it – was a predominant conversation at the Chief Nursing Officer Summit we attended last month in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Walk into any major retailer or entertainment venue, and it’s a good bet that digital signage will grab your attention in some way. Maybe you want to find the nearest concession stand or catch video snippets of the game action at a sports arena. At the grocery store, perhaps you want to peruse the specials of the day or watch a cooking demonstration.

It wasn’t that long ago that teachers spent hours delivering lesson plans using what, then, was a creative new tool - the overhead projector.  However, what seemed like a good idea at the time has since fallen out of favor for a lot of reasons.

It’s been 12 years since the first chief patient experience officer (CXO) was hired. That was 2007 when Cleveland Clinic took the bold step to create the new position on the hospital’s executive team, along with forming a new department – the Office of Patient Experience.

Every hospital aspires to provide a safe environment for patients and employees. And most do, according to Leapfrog’s most recent survey. Nearly three-fourths of the 2,000-plus hospitals in the 2018 Leapfrog Hospital Survey met all nine components of Leapfrog’s never-event policy.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services put hospitals on notice back in 2012 that excessive patient readmissions would not be acceptable – and in fact, could be costly to the hospital. For this reason, the Department of Health and Human Services established the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP). The HRRP served as part of the Affordable Care Act’s goal to improve healthcare by financially rewarding quality care.

To say that technology has changed – is changing – how healthcare is delivered is an understatement. The Gartner Group estimates that worldwide, hospital IT spending will grow by 2.8 percent this year from its $3.7 trillion 2018 level.