Hospitals serve three important customers: patients, physicians, and payers. As they formulate strategy to increase the efficiency and quality of their interactions with those customers, technology is invariably a key component. RelayHealth is an industry leader whose intelligent network improves clinical communication, increases transactional efficiency, and helps build successful relationships among patients, physicians, and payers. We spoke with Ken Tarkoff, Vice President and General Manager of RelayHealth, who oversees the company’s growing roster of consumer offerings.
QuadraMed’s September 2007 acquisition of the former Misys CPR product made it an instant contender in the competitive and rarefied world of high-end, fully functional physician and clinical systems, joining its #1 KLAS-ranked registration and patient accounting system, the #1 Enterprise Master Patient Index application, and QuadraMed’s industry-leading health information management systems. The company has focused its efforts on the Care-Based Revenue Cycle, which recognizes that patient identification, access management, care management, health information management, and revenue management are all tied together in the provision of care and the generation of revenue. We spoke to Jim Klein, senior vice president of product development and chief technology officer of the company.
Labor costs make up 50 to 70% of the average hospital’s operating budget. Therefore, it’s critical to effectively manage that expense and, in addition, retain the scarce licensed professionals needed to ensure high quality and satisfactory patient outcomes. McKesson’s workforce management suite helps hospitals manage their human resources, provide the work-life balance employees expect, effectively fill shifts outside normal scheduling, and even to prepare for Magnet designation. We spoke to Perry Russoniello, RN, BSN, CCRN, vice president and solution line manager for McKesson workforce management solution suite.
IT leaders sometimes underestimate the importance of mobile devices in the success of their clinical systems projects. Nurses are too busy and too tired to use poorly designed computer carts and wall mounts, which sometimes leads to poor clinician adoption of point-of-care software applications. EnovateIT of Ferndale, MI is a proven market leader in mobile systems for healthcare, with over 40,000 devices implemented and improving the acquisition, interpretation, and transfer of patient data. Ron Sgro, president of the company, spoke to us about the company and its industry leadership.
Every hospital struggles with medication reconciliation. Done right, it can provide immediate and dramatic impact on patient safety. Hospitals have learned one important fact: paper processes almost never work. Today’s big-box information systems, particularly when used in a multi-vendor hospital environment, don’t perform medication reconciliation particularly well. The result is wasted nurse time, poorly documented processes, and a lost opportunity to not just comply with a standard of care, but to really improve that care. Design Clinicals was formed by clinicians to develop an elegant, easily implemented solution to the medication reconciliation problem. We spoke to Mary VanHoomissen, vice president of implementations for the company.
