Workforce
Running security and IT under a CFO or chief administrative officer is bound to be problematic because they typically lack a technology background. One expert's alternative: Empower CIOs and all employees to innovate a culture of security.
PowerWare is similar to the Locky virus in that it's delivered via email through a Microsoft Word document that resembles an invoice and locks down the system until the ransom is paid.
Projects come from from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and NIH National Cancer Institute; the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other agencies.
Todd Dunn, Director of Innovation at Intermountain Healthcare, talks about healthcare innovation and leadership.
As electronic health records have proliferated in recent years, so has the use of medical scribes. That's an unwelcome development for two big reasons, said two CMIOs at HIMSS16.
The forum brought together women in various management, technology and clinical roles to discuss how best to create community, resources and content to address the interests of women.
LAS VEGAS - As healthcare moves into a more globally connected environment and government programs, such as those from CMS determine what costs should be for providers, organizations must look toward non-labor needs to improve care outcomes and reduce costs, according to Mark Ziemianski, vice president, Business Analytics at Children's Health System of Texas.
"In the past, companies have always looked at labor first because it's easier when addressing cost reductions," Ziemianski said. But to make sure patients are efficiently served and reduce redundancies, services must be aligned to meet the patient's needs.
When it comes to improving quality, Pamela Arora, senior vice president, CIO at Children's Medical Center of Dallas said, "You get what you measure.
"When we look at serving our community, we have to aggressively manage our costs," she added. "But at the same time, we're looking at how our models work in the community."
And reducing costs doesn't necessarily mean cutting back. "It's a matter of figuring out where we need to re-channel resources," Arora said. "Quite frankly - high cost doesn't equal quality."
Children's Medical Center of Dallas is a nonprofit, academic healthcare institution in Dallas-Fort Worth, made up of two full-service hospitals and is the seventh-largest pediatric healthcare provider in the country.
Children's has been updating its care models over the past few years. Arora said they found analytics have improved patient care, by providing a visual to the community about quality and improvements.
Instead of focusing on spending and how to reduce redundancies, Arora said executives need to go to the staff on the front lines to ask about their needs. In doing so, it can empower the staff and make them more open to change.
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"What we're trying to do is increase value and reduce redundancies," Ziemianski said. "We're no longer just looking at what we've done well, we're looking at everything. We took all of our staff and brought everyone back to fundamental training to improve care."
"We saw real benefits on all accounts; including staff who could do their jobs better because they had more knowledge," he added.
Contributing to the successful cost reduction and its acceptance within the organization, Ziemianski said was making it easier for staff to track their performance using analytics tools designed and implemented by Children's.
Twitter: @JessiefDavis
This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.
The same week the Hollywood Presbyterian attack was making headlines around the world, another species of ransomware – aptly named "Locky" – was first observed in the wild.
Healthcare businesses added more than 37,000 jobs in January, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday, as the first month of 2016 seemed to extend the sector’s job-creating trend over the past year.
Overall, the U.S. economy added 151,000 jobs in the month and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.9 percent.
[Also: The 29 best jobs in healthcare]
The highest job gains in January came from hospitals, which added 23,700 jobs in the month, followed by ambulatory centers, which added 10,700 jobs.
According to the labor department, healthcare has added 470,000 jobs in the past 12 months, with 40 percent of those jobs being created by hospitals.
On the other hand, a few sub-sectors of healthcare actually lost jobs in January, the labor department said. Dentist offices shed 1,500 jobs in the month, data show, while medical and diagnostic laboratories lost more than 3,700 positions.
Here's the seasonally adjusted breakdown for the healthcare sector. All numbers are in thousands:
Industry
Jan. 2015
Nov. 2015
Dec. 2015
Jan. 2016
Change
Industry
Jan. 2015
Nov. 2015
Dec. 2015
Jan. 2016
Change
Healthcare
14,869.40
15,267.00
15,302.30
15,339.10
36.8
Ambulatory healthcare
6,752.20
6,967.50
6,989.20
6,999.90
10.7
Physicians offices
2,497.00
2,564.20
2,568.00
2,574.00
6
Dentists offices
898.6
917.3
925.9
924.4
-1.5
Other healthcare offices
798.3
823.7
827
831.1
4.1
Outpatient care centers
730.6
757.4
760.9
760.5
-0.4
Medical and diagnostic laboratories
254.3
261.1
259.7
256
-3.7
Home health care services
1,291.50
1,349.60
1,354.10
1,360.40
6.3
Other ambulatory healthcare
282
294.2
293.7
293.5
-0.2
Hospitals
4,834.90
4,987.60
5,000.00
5,023.70
23.7
Nursing and residential care facilities
3,282.30
3,311.90
3,313.10
3,315.50
2.4
Nursing care facilities
1,652.80
1,659.20
1,660.10
1,659.20
-0.9
Residential mental health facilities
605.9
609.3
608.7
610.6
1.9
Community care facilities for the elderly
862
882
881.7
883.3
1.6
Other residential care facilities
161.7
161.4
162.6
162.4
-0.2
Twitter: @HenryPowderly
Electronic health record giant Epic Systems has cracked Glassdoor's list of top 20 companies that provide their employees unique benefits and perks.
Epic joined other well-known businesses in the field of healthcare IT as well as business titans such as Netflix, Facebook, Google and Disney.
Glassdoor, one of the three largest U.S. job websites, picked companies with unique benefits by analyzing hundreds of thousands of reviews employees posted on its website since August 2014. Among some of the benefits: "Panda Fridays," improv classes, ski slope passes and a $30-a-month book allowance.
[Also: Epic buys Mayo Clinic data center in $46 million sale-leaseback]
The Glassdoor analysis puts Epic at No. 16 on the list of top 20 companies, with an overall benefit rating of 4.3 out of 5.
It's credited for, among other perks, enabling its employees – once they've worked for the company five years – to take a paid four-week sabbatical to pursue their creative talents.
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Other firms in the healthcare space are on the list. Accenture, touted for its commitment to LGBT rights, covers gender reassignment for its employees. PwC offers its employees $1,200 per year for student loan debt reimbursement. Salesforce offers six days of paid volunteer time off each year, and $1,000 for employees to donate to the charities of their choice.
Other tech companies in Glassdoor's Top 20 include Twitter, which offers on-site acupuncture and improv classes; Adobe, which shuts down the company for a week each in winter and summer, and Airbnb, which gives employees an annual stipend of $2,000 to travel and stay in an Airbnb listing anywhere worldwide.
Twitter: @HealthITNews