Monday, May 13, 2013

Our Blog Is Moving!

Exciting news at Amcom this week – our new website is up and running! We’re a company focused on making communications more efficient for healthcare, emergency dispatch, government offices, and more, so we’ve updated our site to make searching for communication solutions more efficient, too. 

My Mobility in Healthcare blog is also transitioning to the new website at: http://www.amcomsoftware.com/blog, so check back weekly for my update on topics from big data and bring your own device to critical test results and alarm management.

 Please note that if you’re a subscriber to this blog you’ll need to re-subscribe once on the new page. Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Down Under, Same Problem

I wrote last week about a study that identified diagnostic errors as the most common and costly of medical mistakes. The authors’ work was focused on malpractice claims made in the U.S., but this article is also getting attention on the other side of the globe. The Medical Journal of Australia spoke with Dr. Michael Smith, clinical director of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, and he had this to say:

“About half of all diagnostic errors… are system errors — the lab result that goes missing, for example. A classic is the abnormal result that gets put into a patient’s file, but the GP isn’t informed, and if the patient doesn’t come back, the diagnosis is missed or delayed.”
“There are systems that can be put in place by medical practices to reduce those errors,” Dr. Smith said. “That’s the sort of work that’s starting to happen nationally.”

It’s actually happening internationally. In addition to the interest our Australian office has been hearing from customers, we’re already helping many hospitals manage their test results more efficiently, including Tuomey Healthcare in South Carolina, EMH Healthcare in Ohio, and Quinte Health Care in Ontario, Canada.