Dr. Murphy agreed to a podcast.

Fred Trotter interviews Memorial Hermann CMIO Dr. Murphy.

Thanks to Google Voice for making this relatively painless…

Here is the Houston Chronicle article.

Apparently, employees of the HCHD looked at a sick colleagues medical record without justification. And they got fired for it.

I wonder what will happen if this kind of thing happens over an HIE?

-FT

Memorial Hermann wins NQF Healthcare Award

Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Houston, was named the recipient of the National Quality Forum’s 2009 National Quality Healthcare Award. The 16th annual award recognizes a healthcare organization that successfully uses performance measures to drive quality improvement in patient care. Dan Wolterman, Memorial Hermann’s president and chief executive officer said the award “is a wonderful recognition of our employees’ and medical staff physicians’ dedication to ensuring that patients benefit from the best possible clinical outcomes with exceptional patient-care experiences.”

Janet Corrigan, the NQF’s president and CEO said, “In a remarkable group of applicants, Memorial Hermann stood out as a true leader in its commitment to quality in healthcare.”

The NQF, a quality standards consensus-building organization, conducts the award program in partnership with Modern Healthcare and the Studer Group. Modern Healthcare will profile Memorial Hermann and its quality-improvement efforts in a special feature to be published in the May 18 issue. The NQF will honor Memorial Hermann at a gala in Washington on May 19. For more information on the event, visit the NQF’s Web site at qualityforum.org.

I cannot find the results on the HealthGrade website. Perhaps a reader might leave the link in a comment.

In any case, its great to see these local hospitals topping the charts!

I wonder what Health IT techniques they are using?

-FT

The artist previously known as “Roger Clemens Institute for Sports Medicine” will now be called “Memorial Hermann Sports Medicine Institute”.

In its statement, the hospital said the decision to take off Clemens’ name was made “to better reflect its commitment to all sports and athletes” and that “the move reflects the desire to promote the broad range of sports medicine services and programs offered by Memorial Hermann.”

Have you seen during the opening or closing credits of a movie the phrase “Any similarities to real people or events, other than those specifically cited, are unintentional” or something to that effect.

Whenever you read that you should mentally translate it like this “This movie is about someone specific. However, we cannot say that without getting sued, so we say this instead…”

The statements from Memorial Hermann should probably be mentally re-written as:

“We cannot have our sports hospital associated with a steroid-using athlete. However we cannot just say that, because said athlete has given a whole lot of money to us, and is currently suing anyone talking about his possible drug use.  So we will be saying this instead….”

HTH,

-FT

What is interesting about this, besides it being huge. Is that it also features the fact that athenahealth has been selected as the EHR provider for the site. From what I remember, Memorial Hermann has also deployed e-clinicalworks in its physician network. I know some of the internal networking guys at Memorial Hermann and they strike me as a very competent bunch. Perhaps I will see about an interview about how the sites will be integrated

-FT

…agreement with NuPhysicia LLC for the operation of Telemedicine clinics in select Houston-area Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) Supercenters. In order to ensure that patients can differentiate between the physician directed services provided in the Company’s clinics and the nurse-based services provided by most other retail clinic operators, the parties have agreed to operate under the trade name “Walk-In Telemedicine Health Care.”

“A low-level Harris County Hospital District administrator probably violated federal law when she downloaded medical and financial records for 1,200 patients with HIV, AIDS and other medical conditions onto a flash drive that later was lost or stolen, legal experts said Thursday.”

-FT

-FT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When: Friday May 23rd, 2008 - 11AM to 1PM (Don’t come late, or you’ll miss something)

Where: MD. Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Faculty Center Conference Room — FC 1.2002

A complimentary lunch catered by the French Corner will be reserved if you RSVP Duke at (email addressed remove to protect the innocent. Contact me through fredtrotter.com if you want to get it.)

Directions:

To Medical Center http://www.tmc.edu/maps/map-houston- 02.html
To M. D. Anderson http://www.tmc.edu/maps/map-tmc- 04.html

Garage 10 is on right side of map (Take MD Anderson Blvd off Holcombe Blvd). Park in Garage 10 which crosswalks to the hospital building. Take the parking elevator to the 3rd floor. Just beyond the ‘A’ elevators there is a sky/crosswalk that (there will be a security/police desk by the entrance to the crosswalk). The entrance to the Faculty Center building will be on your right once you cross Holcombe. Go through the revolving door, down the hallway to a bank of elevators. Take the elevators to the 1st floor. On the first floor, enter FC1.2000-SBC Telehealth Center FC1.2002 will be the first classroom on the right. About the Topic:

The Evolution of Open Source in Medicine

Where has health IT been? Where is it going? Where is it likely to end up and why? These and other questions might be answered at this talk.
About the Speaker:Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS , Dr. Valdes is a Board Certified Psychiatrist with a twenty two year history of working in the healthcare IT arena. He is an associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston’s School of Health Information Sciences. He is the founder of Linux Medical News, and is a national expert on free and open source medical software and interoperability standards. Prior to medical school he worked for IBM and Compaq as a software and quality control engineer as well as his own software company. He completed medical school at Southwestern in Dallas (1998), residency training at the University of Texas at Houston Department of Psychiatry (2001). He holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Houston (1990) and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M (1985). ]]> http://hitinhouston.com/2008/05/20/dr-valdes-to-speak-at-houston-himss/feed/