Sorry for the delayed posting, but I took some time to sit in on today’s National eHealth Collaborative’s informative webinar, HIT Orientation. The webinar was held in conjunction with National Health IT Week, which is this week. Gwenn Darlinger, an employee of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, presented a comprehensive overview of the history of healthcare IT, including the federal initiatives that spurred the move toward the modernization of the health care system that readers of this blog know all too well about.
Speaking of engaging patients, an article published yesterday in Information Week cites a survey that shows most health IT professionals use social media; in fact, 84% of healthcare professionals use SM outlets. The article contained this interesting quote from one of the study’s authors, Nancy Fabozzi:
“Access to social media tools at work does not appear to be as restricted as we might have initially believed, given all the concerns about privacy and security that we’ve heard about. We assumed that more robust policies might have been in place that would have curtailed use at work.”
Continuing the theme, SearchHealthIT.com today published an article on how David Harlow believes health care organizations may soon require social media use to help meet ACO patient engagement rules. The article provides several useful tips for health care organizations to consider when writing social media policies.
As we’ve discussed at length during the past two #HITsm Friday Tweet chats (held every Friday at 11 a.m., central), hospitals and providers have to balance the “risks vs rewards” of engaging patients and the public through social media outlets. While not health care-specific, Leslie Gaines-Ross recently wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal that provides five tips on how a corporation or organization can defend their digital reputation if a problem arises.
Predictably, there was a lot of social media chatter about last week’s news that Stanford Hospital had a major breach of privacy that resulted in 20,000 patient names and diagnosis being posted online. Quick to offer up advice on the topic, Becker’s ASC published five steps to help you prevent patient data breaches.
Number five on the Becker’s ASC list is “Contract with reputable vendors.” Hindsight is always the greatest teacher, but I’m sure most of you would rather learn from other’s mistakes: Just this week, FierceHealthIT reported that several hospitals in Ireland contracted with an IT vendor – one that manages 10 million patient records – that did not have enough capital to continue operations.
Friday’s #HITsm Tweet Chat Topics
- National Health IT Week (#NHITweek). Did you participate in any of the 10 suggested ways to participate? How do you think the week can be improved?
- Mobile Health. What is your experience working with mHealth and EHRs? How do you think mHealth will change care the next five years? How do you think it will affect interaction with patients?
