Information Age Health Care: Tablet app reduces CHF patient readmissions by 53 percent

New York City-based Health Recovery Solutions announced that its tablet-based program reduced the 30-day readmission rate for 130 congestive heart failure (CHF) patients at Penn Medicine’s Penn Care at Home program by 53 percent.
The hospital provides patients with a cellular-enabled tablet, with the program, called PatientConnect, preloaded. Providers pay Health Recovery Solutions a licensing fee for the package.

Patients can use the system to communicate with their physician via video chat. The tablet software also encourages patients to record medication, weight, activity, and symptoms. Clinicians and caregivers can monitor this data through their own apps, ClinicianConnect and CaregiverConnect. Read More

Ethics and HIT

Challenges...
http://jamia.bmj.com/site/icons/amiajnl8946.pdf

patient safety should trump all other values; corporate concerns about liability and intellectual property ownership may be valid but should not over-ride all other considerations;
transparency and a commitment to patient safety should govern vendor contracts;
institutions are duty-bound to provide ethics education to purchasers and users, and should commit publicly to standards of corporate conduct; and
vendors, system purchasers, and users should encourage and assist in each others’ efforts to adopt best practices.

Meaningful Use (MU) & Nursing

Nurses are central to ensuring Meaningful Use ...

http://www.himss.org/ASP/topics_FocusDynamic.asp?faid=395

Bowles, K. (October, 2010). Achieving Meaningful Use with Information Technology: Telehealth Research. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI),14 (3). Available at http://ojni.org/14_3/Bowles.pdf

Bowles, K.,(February, 2011) ONJNI....Achieving Meaningful Use With Decision Support Research http://tinyurl.com/4ol9r6p

CMS & MU:

Meeting the Requirements for Meaningful Use: Attestation Calculator

HIMMS:

Meaningful Use OneSource assists eligible healthcare providers and professionals in understanding Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 requirements, timelines, and the proposed rule. Our dynamic and living body of documents and tools fully prepares you to:

Meet Meaningful Use proposed Stage 2 certification criteria and standards
Receive Medicare and Medicaid incentive funding and avoid penalties
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Information Age Health Care

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Tablet app reduces CHF patient readmissions by 53 percent

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