JACO Company Blog

On April 16^th Thomson Reuters, a world’s leading source of business news and intelligence, announced its 19^th annual study recognizing the top 100 U.S. hospitals based on 10 critical performance categories: mortality; medical complications; patient safety; average patient stay; expenses; profitability; patient satisfaction; adherence to clinical standards of care; post-discharge mortality; and readmission rates for acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart failure, and pneumonia.

Healthcare IT News posts a follow up article to their 7 most deadly sins of EMR implementation discussing the 6 Golden Rules to follow when implementing a new EMR solution. They spoke with Rosemarie Nelson, principal of the MGMA Consulting Group, and asked for her opinion on what to keep in mind.

With the increased pressure on medical offices to implement meaningful use EHR systems, and the clinicians’ increased dependence on these systems, the support that you get from your medical cart manufacturer is more important than ever. Downtime associated with broken components or battery cells past their lifespan add up to a staggering amount of money very quickly, not only from the repairs involved, but also from the increased time that is spent by the staff. 

As you prepare to take advantage of the government incentives regarding meaningful use EHR adoption (and attempt to avoid the penalties), don’t forget to take a look at your hardware and mobile cart capabilities. If you already have mobile carts, evaluate whether they are satisfying your needs or if changes need to be made to help make the transition to EHR/EMR easier on your workforce. If you don’t have a mobile cart vendor, there is a lot for you to consider.

Quest Diagnostics posts a great infographic showing the differences between EHR and Paper Records.

April, 2012 Franklin, MA  - JACO Inc, the industry leader in healthcare computer cart technology, is proud to announce that Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC) has retained JACO as its mobile computer cart vendor.  EMMC will begin refreshing their computer cart fleet in the summer of 2012 with a state-of-the-art Lithium Iron Phosphate battery technology and new UltraLite 500 series mobile carts. This upgrade will help maximize care giving by providing full shift runtimes, quick mobile cart power system recharges, and years of maintenance free use.  Another unique feature to this new fleet of mobile computer workstation is JACO’s patented ergonomic TRAC steering feature. Proven to reduce user exertion by up to 30%, this one of a kind cart steering system helps reduce the likelihood of on the job injuries and disabilities.

After reading over many articles about EHR/EMR software and integration, you begin to see a lot of similarity between the requests doctors, nurses and administrators have on their EHR platform and the mobile carts that are often used to carry the computing hardware.  Take a few minutes to read Top 5 things my patients and I need in an EHR, and I’ll try to connect the dots.

An ongoing study by SK&A, a marketing research firm in Irvine, Calif., found that for the second half of 2011, adoption rates for single-doctor offices jumped from 30.8% to 36.9%. This is the first time that growth in that segment outpaced that of large practices.

Although extremely popular in the healthcare industry, Apple iPads and other tablets are not being extensively embraced for implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR) initiatives. The Physicians Consulting Network revealed in a 2011 poll that 27% of primary care and specialty physicians owned tablets and use them on the job.  This rate is five times greater than the general population.  Despite the rapid adoption of tablets in the healthcare marketplace, there has been limited progress in terms of their actual meaningful use with certified EHR technology.

JACO will be Attending the ANIA-Caring 2012 Annual Conference, April 12 -14, 2012 at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld, Orlando, FL.