Hospital Administration

Thomson Reuters has released its annual study identifying the 100 top U.S. hospitals based on their overall organizational performance. The 10 areas measured, such as adherence to clinical standards and patient safety, are boosted by the use of information technology.

The Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC) is going digital across its campus as part of an effort to automate paper processes in nearly every area of the medical center.

Web-based billing software and services provider athenahealth has launched athenaCommunicator, a patient communication program that's fully integrated with the company’s physician practice management and EHR services. The suite of Web-based tools aims to free physicians from burdensome administrative tasks, improving practice operations and the quality of care delivered.

Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has received the 4th Annual ECRI Institute Health Devices Achievement Award for an innovative patient monitoring project that uses the Masimo SET pulse oximetry and Masimo Patient SafetyNet remote monitoring and clinician notification system.

A pilot project at the Cleveland Clinic has found that patients with chronic diseases manage them more effectively when they use medical devices to regularly send health information to physicians.

Healthcare nurse call systems vendor Rauland-Borg has teamed with Visonic Technologies, a provider of scalable Active RFID/RTLS based safety, security and management solutions for the healthcare industry, to integrate Elpas RTLS technology with the Responder 5 Nurse Call System.

At HIMSS10, slated for the first week of March in Atlanta, GE Healthcare plans to unveil remote monitoring technologies that assist point-of-care decision making.

The Veterans Affairs Department is looking for a vendor to modify its computerized patient record system so it can track more physician actions. VA seeks the system to track and report on physicians' actions after receiving critical diagnostic test alerts.

Wireless VoIP and unified communications promise better patient care at homes and hospitals, but the deployment of these technologies is being hamstrung by a piecemeal approach that often ignores or even interferes with that care, according to a new study by Spyglass Consulting Group, a consulting group focused on healthcare IT.