Nursing homes will be facing greater scrutiny

CMS cracks down on poor performing nursing homes
There has been a lot of attention paid to quality of care in hospitals and outpatient settings with the use P4P and HEIDIS performance measures, and this has led to a proliferation of IT in these care settings. Unfortunately, nursing homes have lagged in adoption of technology. What is needed at the nursing homes, is the implementation of technology in order to improve the quality of care. I believe the time has come.

Nursing Home IT

Nursing homes, as suspected, are behind the IT curve according to this article (part 1 of 2). Unfortunately, many nursing homes are barely making it financially. Staffing is always a challenge. Make a transition to electronic systems by nursing homes is too much of a barrier to overcome given these issues.

Nursing Homes finally getting attention

FierceHealthIT had an interesting commentary piece on IT in the long-term care setting. As a physician who cares for patients in a nursing home, I know first hand, that caring for a patient in a nursing home is extremely challenging.

There is a complete lack of any IT at most nursing homes. Patients frequently come from multiple sources, such as community and tertiary hospitals. Patients bring with them stashes of paper-- labs, radiology reports, discharge summaries etc. Trying to put all the information together to get a complete view of a patient is nearly next to impossible. It is at the nursing homes where IT- RHIOs/HIEs and telemedicine can have a real impact in the quality of care of patients.
I'm happy to see long-term care finally get some attention.