Role of data in surgical, patient preparedness for MSK cases
An estimated 126.6 million Americans are dealing with the impact of a musculoskeletal (MSK) condition, according to a US Bone and Joint Initiative report. That means, one in two adults in the US have gone or will be going through a wide range of hip, knee, shoulder, and/or spine procedures.…
Why screening misses critical influences on patient health
Editor's Note Health record codes that track social, environmental, and economic influences on patient health outcomes are vastly underutilized during screening, according a December 19 EurekAlert! report on research from John Hopkins and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Published in Health Affairs Scholar, the study analyzes the…
Smartwatches detect irregular heart rhythms in kids
Editor’s Note Smartwatches can detect and diagnose irregular heart rhythms in children that standard physician monitoring may miss, Medical Xpress reports. Published on December 13 in Communications Medicine, the findings are based on a survey of 4 years’ worth of electronic medical records for pediatric cardiology patients at Stanford Medicine…
Researchers are calling for better tracking of chronic diseases
Editor's Note There are new efforts underway to better harness electronic health record (EHR) data to track chronic diseases, as was done with tracking infectious diseases such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article discussing these efforts appeared in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice in October 2023.…
Lack of accurate information on patient deaths in California strains resources
Editor's Note In California, 20% of patients who have died were still being shown as alive with a serious illness in their medical records, leading to wasteful outreach and strain on hospital workers’ time, MedicalXpress December 4 reports. The findings were originally published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Due to a…
How health systems are using tech tools to make ORs more efficient
Most hospitals agree that they can better harness the data they are collecting from registration through discharge in order to streamline patient turnovers, reduce wait times, and improve patient and staff satisfaction, but there is still uncertainty about how best to turn massive quantities of data into better patient outcomes.…
Physicians spent more time in EHR with telehealth during pandemic
Editor's Note New research shows that physicians who used telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic spent increased time working in the electronic health record (EHR). The research findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine on October 30. Researchers studied the weekly EHR metadata of 1,052 physicians at the University of California…
Primary care reminders key to timely follow up for cancer patients with abnormal screenings
Editor's Note Patient outreach efforts, including a reminder in the electronic health record (EHR) following an abnormal cancer screening, helped to ensure timely follow-up, a new investigative study in JAMA Network reports. This cluster randomized clinical trial, titled "A multilevel primary care intervention to improve follow-up of overdue abnormal cancer…
AI accurately predicts 30-day readmission risk
Editor's Note Researchers at New York University Langone Health, New York City, have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) computer program that predicts whether a newly discharged patient will be readmitted within 30 days, the June 7 HealthDay reports. The AI program, named “NYUTron,” is a large language model that works…
New EHR generative AI by Microsoft, Epic currently being piloted
Editor's Note On April 17, electronic health records (EHR) vendor Epic and Microsoft announced a partnership to train Azure OpenAI on a large collection of information so it can “asynchronously draft responses to patient messages for providers,” Becker’s Health IT May 25 reports. According to Becker's, there are four major…
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