To keep your hospital’s setup “in-house” using a shared drive, intranet, or home-grown solution such as SharePoint, certain hidden costs inevitably happen. Asking the right questions to uncover those costs is imperative to providing quality healthcare at an affordable price. Let’s explore the three areas of hidden costs so you can make an informed decision before developing and migrating to a budget-eating SharePoint solution. Read
Trends are showing that organizations are moving in droves to cloud computing. Businesses are running all kinds of applications in the cloud these days. Cloud-based applications can be up and running in a few days, which is unheard of with traditional business software. They generally cost less, because you don’t need to pay for all the people, products, and facilities to run them. And it turns out they’re more scalable, more secure, and more reliable than most applications. Plus, upgrades are taken care of for you, so your applications get security and performance enhancements and new features automatically. Read
Hospitals must constantly improve, and it is important to draft your policies with the end-result in mind: providing the best patient care possible. Caregivers can achieve this goal by making policy language easy to read and easy to comprehend. Anytime we evaluate Caregivers, we strive to be conscious of ways to help them do their job better. Questions like, “What obstacles do you face?” and “What would make your job easier?” have led to a themed response: “As a Caregiver, I have a difficult time finding and understanding up-to-date policies.” Read
If risks go unidentified or uncontrolled, disaster can strike. The importance of effective risk management for U.S. hospitals is of the highest priority. According to The Institute of Medicine, a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, at least 1.5 million Americans fall prey to hospital error every year. Financial liability for acts and misconduct of its employees is becoming one of the most significant areas of exposure for health care organizations. Hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars in damages resulting from claims of injury from a hospital or health facility occur annually. Not to mention the negative effect of the publicity, loss of trust, and suffering caused to the victim as a result of inconsistent risk management. Most would agree that efficient risk management is vital, but the challenging part is accomplishing this task.” Read
Having everything in the palm of your hand is quickly becoming a reality and a trend. The combination of wireless technology and mobile communication has lead to more people accessing, performing, and exchanging any task they may have at any time. The development and adoption of smartphones in healthcare organizations is allowing physicians to do more than ever before. A study by Spyglass Consulting Group showed that 94 percent of physicians in 2010 used smartphones, compared to 59 percent in 2006. It seems inevitable that every physician is going to have a smartphone in the near future. With sophisticated technology, such as the iPhone and Blackberry, the possibilities are endless. Read