Technology & Security

It is time to think of IT differently—not as a business function but as a business partner with the same business objectives as your healthcare organization as a whole. That means strategic business goals should drive IT decisions. In healthcare organizations, the ultimate business goals are delivering superior patient care and improving outcomes. IT exists principally to support those and other goals.

Understanding IT in terms of a business partnership drives down costs. The main drivers of IT costs can be a “hard sell” by vendors to executives and physicians...

In at least one respect, rural hospitals are no different than metropolitan hospitals — both need advanced telecom systems and robust data circuits for optimal patient experiences and clinical outcomes. However, these services typically cost more for rural health care providers, making it difficult to keep up with the latest advancements. This is where Community Hospital Corporation (CHC) can help. Accessing a government program, CHC Consulting, the management and consulting arm of CHC, helps eligible hospitals obtain federal funding earmarked specifically to address this discrepancy. With telecom as well as...

Yoakum Community Hospital’s antiquated data network and low-speed internet fell short of meeting today’s healthcare industry demands, including use of electronic health records. “We need to be up 24-7 with reliable connections and redundant circuits in case of a primary system failure,” says Crystal Harris, the hospital’s IT director. CHC leveraged federal USAC funding for IT upgrades including high-speed internet and disaster recovery. Citing improvements in patient care as well as operational and financial performance, hospital CFO John Olivares calls the upgrades a “quantum leap forward” for the...

Like hospitals everywhere, St. Mark’s Medical Center in La Grange, Texas, made a substantial investment to switch over to electronic health records (EHRs). Offsetting this expense, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides incentive payments for the “meaningful use” of certified EHR technology to improve patient care. But demonstrating “meaningful use” as defined by CMS is a rigorous three-stage process. CHC provided the strategy and support St. Mark’s needed to reap the full benefits of meaningful use, starting with incentive payments and progressing to improved...

In 2004, I helped found a new 32-bed Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH) in Kentucky and I was privileged to serve as its CEO thru mid 2017 when I stepped away to solve some significant problems for rural Kentucky’s Healthcare Providers. In December of 2013, we transitioned to a new corporate parent that had more experience and expertise in supporting our type of specialty hospital and that began a period of unparalleled success for my hospital.

Read the full case report on execubay.com by Alan Coppock, M.Ed., MBA,...

One line-item expense in every hospital budget regardless of facility size or location is telecommunications. Why do rural hospitals tend to pay more for telecom services than their urban counterparts? Carriers are able to charge for the expense of installing and maintaining communications to rural areas. Fortunately, reduced rates for broadband and telecom services are available to rural providers through the Rural Healthcare Telecommunications (RHC) Program, a federal program supporting universal service and access throughout the country. It includes two subprograms, the Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) Program and the Telecommunications...

In this era of electronic data, we’ve come to expect that personal information stored electronically will remain private, accessible only on a “need-to-know” basis to those you identify. But what happens when organizational data becomes available to others as a result of cyber attacks? As an industry, hospitals face particular challenges.

In fact, health care organizations top the list of the most cyber-attacked industries, followed by manufacturing, financial services and the government. Data breaches place private patient data at risk, and HIPAA standards and compliance audits don’t adequately address security...

Community Hospital Blog
by Amy Boykin, SVP Quality, Patient Safety and Care Management, CHC

Across the country, hospitals continue to make significant investments in the implementation, enhancement and use of electronic health records (EHRs). The use of EHRs to coordinate and share more complete patient information is widely recognized as a way to improve quality of care and patient safety. However, EHRs can also be a new source of medical errors with the potential for patient harm.

Read this and more from Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical...