Blog Home : Off Script
Former national coordinator for health information technology, Dr. David Brailer, says over the long haul an EMR system could save the nation $200 billion to $300 billion a year by reducing duplications and errors that increase healthcare costs, reducing fraudulent claims, and helping to better coordinate care between physicians, hospitals and specialists. He says the idea is to create a more efficient workflow.
I have to say - Our customers have been "reducing duplications and errors that increase healthcare costs, reducing fraudulent claims, and helping to better coordinate care between physicians, hospitals and specialists" and creating more efficient workflows for a very long time. Does that mean they don't need an EMR if they use us, or if they transition to an EMR they won't need our technology? Of course not. One thing we've learned is that as healthcare applications are developed and implemented there is even more opportunity to automate workflow. In fact, the implementations of EMRs should open up the automation and integration markets as hospitals and clinics strive to take advantage of having patient information readily available to all healthcare constituents. Better healthcare - better business.
If you're in a Meditech hospital you know. You're either headed into Upgrade Hell or you're in it - and it's really hot there. Just when you had things chugging along nicely, getting through your to-do list, they introduce new versions for Client Server. This isn't a simple upgrade, it's a whole new animal - especially if you've been using a scripting tool to automate simple - and not so simple workflow.
Continue reading "Meditech Upgrades: Holy Cow!" »
Electronic medical records, nationwide electronic health records, computer physician order entry. That's a lot of critical patient information all relying on systems staying up and it's a lot of pressure on network and IT staff to ensure staff has current records available when necessary.
A number of customers are relying on Boston WorkStation for disaster recovery during downtime. I'm not talking about backing up data. These customers are automating the task of providing critical information when it's needed most.
Continue reading "What happens when the lights go out?" »
Today on Good Morning America there was a pretty scary story about medical billing errors. In the story, a woman was told her procedure would cost $5,000 and she got a bill for over $12,000. After hiring a Billing Advocate who found simple mistakes such as misplaced decimal points and typographical errors, the bill was reduced to just over $5,000. Come on folks! Those are needless errors that cost your organization time and revenue - and as consumers have greater choice, it may cost you business.
Continue reading "Catching Medical Billing Errors" »
Healthcare Information Management isn't just for geeks any more. Every day in virtually every major news outlet there is an article about the impact of electronic records on patient care, on cost and on efficiency. It's not just technology news, it's consumer news. So what's the impact on HIMSS?
Continue reading "Heading to HIMSS" »
A recent news report describes the stimulus plan for healthcare as a series of carrots and sticks used to encourage hospitals to get their electronic recordkeeping up to speed. The carrots come as financial incentives for proving that you are progressing on the path; sticks will be financial holdbacks for not getting with the program.
Continue reading "Carrots and sticks may make a good diet for healthcare" »
Health Information Technology, Health Information Standards, Healthcare Enterprise Integration, EHR Technology. What do these words taken directly from Obama's stimulus package mean to healthcare organizations? How will they change healthcare as we know it?
Late last week one of our executives was on a call with the technology columnist of a major US newspaper. He was interested in understanding what we thought the impact of Obama's stimulus package would be to Boston Software Systems. How much would it affect our business and how soon would we see that effect. Tough to know how quickly Congress will be willing to cough up another big (BIG) chunk of change when there's little evidence the last chunk wasn't just used to remodel some executive's bathroom. But, here's what I think:
Continue reading "Just how stimulating will the Obama healthcare plan be?" »
It wasn't the monster thunderstorms or the freezing temperatures that distinguished HIMSS 08 in Orlando, FL this year. Nor was it the record breaking attendence (over 28,400 attendees). During the three days of the HIMSS exhibition, we spoke with hundreds of healthcare vendors and hospital staffers and the magic word we heard time and time again was AUTOMATION.
Continue reading "From the Floor of HIMSS 08" »
I read this really great article this week in Information Week and thought about the consequences of companies that don't start utilizing Business Intelligence (BI) within their enterprise.
Continue reading "Scripting makes Business Intelligence easier! " »
Desktop software vendors are always looking for an edge. This is similar to an athlete looking for the little extra to perform at a high level (legally of course). In a world where scripting isn't an option or thought of one will look at the database or potentially creating integration programs that can make disparate systems talk with each other.
Continue reading "A scripting API can be the engine that sets your application apart" »
