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Why doctors prescribe more opioids at the end of the day
Sheilamary Koch PharmaceuticalMore opioid prescriptions were written for patients seeing their primary care provider toward the end of the day, according to a study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Time pressure influencing doctors’ clinical decision-making is a long-standing concept, yet little empirical research has examined its validity or magnitude, write the researchers of the study Hannah Neprash, Ph.D., and Michael Barnette, MD. Specifically, they examined how appointment timing affects prescribing for patients with pain.
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Are you a 2- or 3-dimensional healthcare job candidate?
Keith Carlson Medical & Allied HealthcareWhen you have a stake as a job candidate in the healthcare employment marketplace, being able to differentiate yourself from the competition is key. Your future employer is going to spend a great deal of money and resources vetting, hiring, training, and onboarding you, so you need to clearly communicate that you’re worthy of this expensive and time-consuming process that constitutes a financial risk for any organization that chooses to hire you.
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Why doing everything right away is not always a best practice
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementAs an avid follower of the Getting Things Done system, I am a big fan of doing something right away if it takes two minutes or less. However, I have found sometimes where, counterintuitively, it seems best to wait a bit before playing whack-a-mole with issues as they arise. Here are a few examples of when doing things right away may not always be a best practice.
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How a lean management approach can improve patient outcomes
Lisa Mulcahy Healthcare AdministrationLean management: it's an interesting concept in the business world and sounds like a great way to streamline your approach as a hospital administrator. So, what is it, exactly? Lean management's core principles are that you deliver value from your customer’s perspective; you eliminate waste; and you continue to improve in every way possible as your work progresses. This sounds like a tall order — but if you do an overview of the way certain hospital procedures are currently handled, you'll see where you should focus your efforts to go lean, and things will fall into place.
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Living life on the edge: Compassionately caring for all patients
Lisa Cole Medical & Allied HealthcareI'm not referring to folks who are bungee jumping, cliff diving, zip lining or driving race cars here. Rather, the opposite. While we providers do patch up plenty of such patients in the aftermath of such death-defying (or not!) feats, more often we care for those whose entire lives entail living on the edge. Think mental illness, chronic pain, the imprisoned, the disabled, victims of abuse, the homeless, dying patients and the poor. Let's examine our perceptions of patients, coping, resiliency and how we care.
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Researchers find controversial results after investigating opioid use,…
Lynn Hetzler Medical & Allied HealthcareIt is almost universally agreed that opioid prescription in the emergency department (ED) is risky, largely because of the risk of abuse. The results of a recent study suggest the risk of long-term prescription opioid use and potential misuse stemming from ED prescriptions for opioids to treat acute pain is less than some might expect. Lead author of the study, Raoul Daoust, MD, MSc, and his team wanted to assess opioid use rate and the reasons patients continue to consume opioids three months after discharge from the emergency department with an opioid prescription. They found that opioid use was relatively low three months after discharge from the ED with an opioid prescription.
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Study: Connected devices pose security risks for most health systems
Scott E. Rupp Medical & Allied HealthcareRegarding healthcare technology, there are a few notable maxims: things move quickly; there's a lot of money pouring into the sector; and security always is a concern. Case in point: eight out of 10 healthcare organization security leaders admit that they have experienced an internet of things (IoT) cyberattack in the past year. Of these organizations, 30% said the security incident compromised end-user safety. These are the findings of a new study released by security software company Irdeto. The Netherlands-based firm polled 232 healthcare security decision-makers.
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5 ways to incorporate pharmacists onto your inpatient care teams
Lisa Mulcahy Healthcare AdministrationAs a healthcare professional, you know the important role your organization's pharmacists play in every patient's treatment and recovery. But did you know that your pharmacists can have a much greater impact on improving outcomes beyond their traditional consult role with your physicians? Cutting-edge research has illuminated fresh ways that your pharmacists' knowledge can be used as active members of inpatient teams. Try this proven advice.
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How machine learning helps important industries
Joseph Zulick Science & TechnologyIn 1952, IBM's Arthur Samuel created a program to play checkers. Samuel played with the program so often that it was able to improve with each consecutive game. It was Samuel who first coined the term "machine learning." Today, machine learning has become embedded technology many of us take for granted in our daily lives. There are many industries that currently use machine learning to help improve their daily processes. Through machine learning, businesses can move ahead of descriptive and predictive analytics to prescriptive analytics without a hitch. Keep reading to learn more.
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CMS: Hospitals must post rates; hospitals not interested in doing so
Scott E. Rupp Medical & Allied HealthcareIn healthcare, it seems that nothing is easy — technology, regulation, privacy, and security. And now, pricing. Efforts are underway to make prices more transparent; this is a tentpole issue for the Trump administration, which wants hospitals to begin posting "shoppable" prices online in 2020. According to reports, some hospitals are facing some challenges for doing so and are trying to figure out how they'll be able to meet the requirement.
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