There are thousands of solutions in the health IT field. We asked our readers which tools they would recommend.
The following 10 products, presented in alphabetical order, have applications ranging from chronic care to cybersecurity, but each comes with rave reviews from Becker's Hospital Review readers.
Responses have been edited for clarity and concision. If you would like to recommend a health IT product for this list, please contact Carrie Pallardy at cpallardy@beckershealthcare.com.
1. ActionCue. ActionCue is integrated risk, quality and performance improvement software from Prista. The software is designed for healthcare executives, quality managers and clinical staff.
Heather Greenwood, RN, BSN, Quality & Risk Management Director, Seymour (Texas) Hospital: "I really want to make a strong statement on how ActionCue has helped our rural hospital in providing excellence.
Quality improvement departments can easily depict organizational information, and it is visible in graph form and score cards for employees, supervisors, managers, administration and even board members. It has very readable information that in turn creates a better culture of operational process in terms of improving quality and outcomes.
ActionCue's is affordable for small rural hospitals; we can easily put it in our budgets. I researched several other QI software programs and the cost was four- to eight-fold higher and more driven toward bigger facilities.
Our fall rate was around 3.5 with a national average of 4.0. We reduced our falls to a rate of 2.0. We showed administration and board members our fall rate and what we were proposing to do about reducing it. Our program was able to show them real results, not only making a huge impact on decreasing injuries, but also showing what a great investment it was."
2. AWARE. Ambient Warning and Response Evaluation is a clinical decision support tool from Ambient Clinical Analytics, with technology support from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic. The tool aims to reduce the risk of errors in intensive care units, operating rooms and emergency departments."
Vitaly Herasevich, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Medicine, Mayo Clinic: "Information overload and alert fatigue is increasing with the amount of information clinicians need to deal with. It creates even more pressure in intensive care units, where physicians need to treat multiple sick patients at once. Original EMRs are not designed to solve such a problem, but there are some attempts to construct dashboards for clinical data. What makes AWARE different from other systems is that it was built based on rigorous research and expertise of multiple clinicians.
During initial implementation at Mayo Clinic, we reviewed almost 4,000 feedback notes pertinent to all elements of the system that allowed AWARE to be embedded in the clinical workflow. AWARE shows clinicians what they need, at the right point and time."
Note: Mayo Clinic and Dr. Herasevich a have financial interest in the products mentioned in this statement. Revenue Mayo receives is used to support its nonprofit mission in patient care, education and research.
3. Chronic Care Management. Caremerge's Chronic Care Management solution integrates with healthcare providers' EHRs. The solution is designed to improve communication, reduce gaps in care, boost patient and family engagement and more.
Linda Farley, LPN, Home Health Physicians: "Earlier this spring, Caremerge and Home Visit Physicians, a practice located in Eatontown, N.J., began a pilot program for the Caremerge Chronic Care Management Solution.
Since the pilot's implementation, more than 500 chronically ill patients have signed on to participate. The chronic care management solution places an emphasis on patient engagement for in-between-visit care. One of the greatest benefits of the Chronic Care Management Solution is the increase in candid communication. Since the program's onset, the additional layer of communication has seen patients become more forthright and active in their own care, while building a closer, more trusting relationship with the practice.
In addition to the positive behavioral changes, the program has promoted increased organizational efficiency and streamlined workflows. Duplicate information was found and deleted, important data, including medication dosage, has been updated and additional information has been captured that otherwise wouldn't have been on the practice's radar. The future holds potential for increased education and patient engagement."
4. Dragon Medical. Dragon Medical is a clinical speech recognition tool for small- to mid-sized physician practices. The product offers real-time, anywhere EHR dictation.
Richard Garcia, MD, Beverly Hospital (Montebello, Calif.): "I have been practicing emergency medicine for 22 years. As the medical director of my group, it is imperative that we capture complete documentation for medical-legal reasons. As a group we have been very successful in accomplishing these goals using Dragon Medical. Using voice recognition technology has allowed us to capture our documentation contemporaneously and in a very efficient manner."
5. Imprivata OneSign. Imprivata OneSign is a solution that incorporates single sign-on, authentication management and virtual desktop roaming. The tool is designed to streamline access to EMRs, while maintaining compliance with regulatory measures.
Jim Lowder, Vice President, Technology, OhioHealth (Columbus): "We have relied on Imprivata OneSign for years as an integral component of our IT strategy to provide our caregivers with efficient access to clinical systems, which allows them to keep their focus entirely on patient care. Imprivata continues to deliver new product features and enhancements that consider IT, security, compliance and clinical workflow requirements, enabling us to expand the use of Imprivata OneSign to thousands of users across our organization."
6. InDemand Interpreting. InDemand Interpreting offers access to video remote interpreting for limited English proficient patients and deaf patients. The tool provides access to more than 200 languages. InDemand Interpreting is accessible from laptops and tablets.
Kathy Kanaley, Patient Care Representative, Kenmore Mercy Hospital (Buffalo, N.Y.): "America's ever-growing cultural melting pot makes it difficult for hospitals to communicate with each patient in his or her native language. The evolving field of virtual interpreters is ensuring medical conversations are easier and patients receive the highest quality care regardless of language barriers, cultural backgrounds or disabilities. Hospitals that use video remote interpreting systems note improvements in patient satisfaction when they are able to communicate with a live person who can speak their native language."
7. MedAssets Defensible Price Modeling. MedAssets Defensible Pricing Model is part of the company's cost-to-charge analytics service. The tool helps healthcare providers establish a defensible pricing strategy to understand issues in pricing and coding.
Rick Schooler, FACHE, LFCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO, MBA, Vice President, CIO, Orlando Health: "Since 2007 we've worked with MedAssets to develop, refine and enforce a long-term pricing strategy that more appropriately reflects the relationship between charge and underlying cost. We've done this using MedAssets Defensible Price Modeling, which is a consulting solution designed to promote transparency by helping hospitals establish new chargemaster prices that reflect a rational and defensible mark-up based methodology. The benefits to Orlando Health from these engagements include a simplified pricing methodology and net revenue improvement, which has consistently met or exceeded annual targets, and a more competitive position among regional peer hospitals."
8. Mach7 Enterprise Imaging Platform. The Mach7 Enterprise Imaging Platform facilitates patient information sharing across departments, while focusing on reducing the IT costs associated with proprietary medical image archiving systems.
Trent Conwell, IT Director, Sentara Healthcare (Norfolk, Va.): "The Mach7 Enterprise Imaging Platform is rock solid. In image storage alone we realized significant savings. It costs $100,000 to migrate 500,000 images. Using a vendor neutral archive system such as Mach7 reduces those costs, as well as those associated with mergers and acquisitions, making it easier to connect new hospitals with the system. Mach7 brought us a detailed level of industry knowledge of systems and integration that helped us understand our own environment even better."
9. Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection. Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection is a defense system designed to defend against malicious links in email and weaponized attachments. The tool prevents employees from inadvertently revealing credentials or downloading malware.
Dave Trent, CIO, Pharmacy Network Services (Johnson City, Tenn.): "It was clear to me that Mimecast follows the market and comes up with new techniques for fighting increasingly advanced threats. Our organization quickly saw the benefits of having Targeted Threat Protection in place. Shortly after implementation, the technology enabled us to detect spear-phishing messages coming from a customer. It blocked the links in those emails, so our business wouldn't fall victim to the attack. It also allowed us to immediately notify the customer that their system had been compromised."
10. RoundingWell. RoundingWell is a patient engagement tool focused on check-ins with post-hospitalization and chronic disease patients in several different condition and disease areas. The tool also offers care coordination and population health insights.
Doug Johnson, MD, Vice Chairman, Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (Nashville, Tenn.): "Creating care plans personalized for each patient is a must-do for us at DCI. This means having a platform that can integrate both historical and real-time patient generated data into clinical workflows to make sure each patient gets the care he or she needs. With the unique needs of chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease patients in mind, we investigated many solutions and landed on RoundingWell.
RoundingWell enables our clinicians to interact with, take care of and monitor our patients across their entire healthcare journey. RoundingWell's proactive health check-in feature gives our clinicians the ability to screen patients on their mental and physical condition on a regular basis, without requiring an in-person visit or phone call. Data collected from our patients' check-ins are automatically analyzed in real-time for indicators of possible adverse health events.
When an event is identified, clinicians can activate pathways, which make it easy to follow standardized protocols of care. Any member of the clinician team can see what everyone else has done and plans to do for the patient. Plans can be adjusted, clinicians can communicate with each other and messages can be sent directly to patients on this shared platform. RoundingWell is one of the key components helping us transition to newer models of care delivery."