White Paper: Managing Denied Claims
The ticket to revenue and cash is getting control of (and reducing) denied claims. This white paper from Third Millennium Healthcare Systems examines leadership strategies that healthcare organizations can employ to avoid denials. It offers a best practices approach and covers the major reasons for claim denials. www.rsleads.com/501ht-910

Report: A Review of Chronic Disease Registries
This report from the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) and NAS Consulting Services provides an overview of standalone electronic registry products. www.rsleads.com/501ht-911

Using Computerized Disease Registries
This related report from CHCF and First Consulting Group gives an overview of the function and use of disease registries, and identifies how they can provide an affordable and practical way for physicians seeking to improve management of patients with chronic conditionsperhaps in lieu of an EMR.  www.rsleads.com/501ht-912

White Paper: Bar Coding
Presentation compares bar code-enabled point-of-care (BPOC) systems to computerized physician order entry (CPOE). Authoring company Bridge Medical provides bar code information systems, so the dissertation comes with an anticipated bias toward BPOCbut it also comes with 50+ citations from respected industry leaders such as AHRQ, JAMA, HIMSS and JCAHO.  www.rsleads.com/501ht-931

Report: Medical Error Rate Bad News Update
A July 2004 report indicates that in-hospital medical errors, on average, cost 195,000 lives and $6 billion a year more than double the numbers reported in a 1999 Institute of Medicine study that shocked U.S. healthcare. For the latest report, this from HealthGrades, go to www.rsleads.com/501ht-932

Report: CPOE Can Benefit Physician Practices
Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) could help California physicians save more than $3 billion annually and prevent nearly 250,000 medication-related injuries, according to a study produced for the California HealthCare Foundation. Prepared by the Center for Information Technology Leadership, the report estimates that widespread adoption of these systems would save individual providers save about $29,000 a year in expenses and avoid about nine adverse drug reactions each year. For a copy of the full report, visit www.rsleads.com/501ht-913

White Paper: Managing Patients With a Purpose
Organizations that rely on patients for revenue (health plans, hospitals, physician practices) may want to read PRM Making Better Patient Connections, a 19-page, noncommercial white paper from The CPM (Customer Potential Management) Marketing Group in Middleton, Wisc., that addresses how to enhance patient relationships so they are more productive for all partners involved. Logon to CPMs Web site at www.rsleads.com/501ht-914, then click on the Press Room tab for hospitals or physicians. Click on the White Papers category to find the PRM paper.

Case History: CRM for ALFs, SNFs and Eldercare
Only about 2 to 3 percent of adults have shopped online for eldercare services, including Alzheimers care units, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living and retirement communities. Patients usually find these facilities following discharge from an acute care hospital or rehab facility, and usually on referral from a case manager. But Beverly Enterprisewith facilities in 25 statesdidnt want to rely only on hospital referral to communicate with its prospective patients. It turned to Youve Got Leads for a combination of workflow solution with lead capture and management. Click here for their CRM case history. www.rsleads.com/501ht-915

White Paper: Birds Eye View of Digital Hospitals
Digital Hospitals Move Off the Drawing Board, from First Consulting Group and the California HealthCare Foundation, explores the goals of hospitals making a digital transformation and examines the approaches of various hospitals to achieving desired results. Presents a hefty section of lessons learned at a variety of organizations, including NorthCrest Medical Center in Springfield, Tenn., St. Vincents Hospital in Birmingham, Ala. and El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif. www.rsleads.com/501ht-916  

White paper: Document Management Reduce Risk of Error
Every time a team member accesses a document, it creates an opportunity for error. Whether the document is electronic or paper, errors will not be avoided unless healthcare organizations develop document management strategies that contribute to error reduction. This paper from Lanier discusses the high-level components of strategy development that can be adapted hospitals, IDNs, payers and even physician groups that want to get their arms around document management issues. This non-commercial treatise is a good look at issues that all HCOs should consider in planning a document management strategy that works. www.rsleads.com/501ht-917  

Pick Your EMR
Mark R. Anderson and the AC Group Inc. share the results of 28-months of research and a thorough 70-page EMR survey, a boon to physicians shopping for the right technology. They name names, along with functionalities and prices, as they delineate some of the best performers for small, medium-size and large physician practices. Learn how practices rate the systems they use. Read summary of the study, updated in summer, at www.rsleads.com/501ht-918   

White Paper: Return on Investment for EMRs
Five medical practices describe the benefitsand ROIthey receive from implementing an electronic medical record. Authored by A4 Health Systems and Kenneth M. Hekman of The Hekman Group consultancy, this short but good white paper examines the return on investment experienced by practices that implemented the HealthMatics EMR from A4. Look for it by title, from a list of white papers on the site: Return on Investment for EMR- Retrospective Analysis of Five Practices. www.rsleads.com/501ht-919  

Making That EMR Work: Avoid Install, Deinstall, Reinstall
Making an EMR work is almost as challenging as selecting the right system. Even today, horror stories abound from physician practices that selected and installed, deselected and deinstalled, and then reselected and reinstalled. From Misys Healthcare Systems, Critical Success Factors for Practice-Wide EMR Implementations: Ten Steps to Maximize ROI offers food for thought. This white paper is available without a registration requirement from Misys. www.rsleads.com/501ht-920

Predictive Modeling: White Paper
Heres a 12-page white paper with a title that tells you exactly what to expect:
Predictive Modeling and Finding and Intervening With the High-Cost Healthcare Consumer. The Haelen Groups paper is a complete, non-commercial, and strong treatise on predictive modeling, including how it is the next IT step in the disease management (DM) chaina chain that so far hasnt produced the universally desired results. This paper examines some of the shortfalls of typical DM programs and explains, in detail, the proactive and interactive nature of the results that predictive modeling initiatives can achieve. www.rsleads.com/501ht-921

Financial Analysis Tools For Your Labor Management Technology Project - Going Beyond ROI
With limited investment dollars in the budget, choosing which technologies to implement from those to backburner can be overwhelming for healthcare organizations. Because as much as 60 percent or more of an HCOs operating budget is typically allocated to labor costs, technology projects are often aimed at bringing about labor savings. But high-tech solutions dont automatically mean results that justify the expense. Especially in healthcare, the best technology investment is often measured not only labor dollars saved, but also in providing better patient care, directly or indirectly. This white paper provides basic financial direction for evaluating potential labor management technology projects in healthcare. It explores how and why to use common financial analysis tools to quantify potential projects, enabling decision-makers to articulate the feasibility of potential projects. To access the 4-page White Paper, click here: www.rsleads.com/501ht-922 

White Paper: Capacity Management
Maximizing Hospital Capacity, Tele-Tracking Technologies Gene Nacey, M.H.A., provides a detailed look at issues facing hospitals as they manage patient capacity. Nacey focuses on the patient flow continuum and identifies five distinct processes that interact with each other and, together, influence and determine how patients flow in, around and out of hospital systems. This 14-pager is a non-commercial, comprehensive look at factors that affect how well (or poorly) a hospital manages its patient capacity. It is available without a registration requirement at www.rsleads.com/501ht-923

White Paper: Strategies to Improve Materials Management
From Broadlane, Overcoming the Clinical Preference Obstacle is a look at how materials management execs can solve problems with strategy and technology changes. It describes the challenges faced by materials managers in saving money, decreasing waste, reducing product variability and using GPOs effectively. It discusses several main elements contributing to the challenge: 1) clinical preferences for items that are not under contract; 2) decentralized purchasing processes; 3) and inadequate contract coverage strategies. The 8-page white paper includes 3 mini-case histories illustrating how the process works. www.rsleads.com/501ht-924

Inside e-Prescribing for Physicians
This article analyzes the benefits, processes and expected outcomes of e-prescribing from the physician perspective. It presents flow charts of e-prescribing vs. the manual process and discusses the relationship of EMRs to e-prescribing. For more information, visit www.rsleads.com/501ht-925.

Pay-for-Performance: What Physician Practices Need to Consider
Pay-for-Performance initiatives arent newbut a growing number of health plans are beginning to pay physicians in accordance with how well they meet establish quality standards. Getting Rewards for Your Results is downloadable from Family Practice Management, at the American Academy of Family Physicians Web site. Written by four MDs, the article offers a good, overall perspective of P4P programs with special attention to the questions of how the health plan collects its performance data and how it sets its performance standards. www.rsleads.com/501ht-926

Article: "What's Wrong With RFID?"
While not specifically a healthcare IT article, this article by Jeffrey Rothfeder does explore issues that healthcare IT experts, and especially materials management execs, would be wise to consider in the future: Cost, accuracy of RFID systems, signal disruption and, of course, the need for standards. www.rsleads.com/501ht-927

White Paper: Comparing HF and UHF Technologies
Texas Instruments, TAGSYS and Philips Electronics present this 22-page, heavy-duty exposition about radio frequency identification technologies (RFID). Despite being written for and about the pharmaceutical industry, this paper still offers an in-depth look RFID vs. bar code technology and sections on global standards and power requirements, privacy concerns, inventory management and deployment considerationsand will interest those in healthcare IT involved in RFID projects. www.rsleads.com/501ht-934

White Paper:  A Strategy for Transforming Health Service Delivery
This paper portrays next-generationscheduling solutions through the lens of Siemens, but in a non-commercial way with a meaty, concise (and hypothetical) example of a tech-savvy patient. The paper explores the impact of workflow-engineered scheduling IT in healthcares clinical, administrative and financial arenas, and stresses that an integration of all three arenas within the scheduling function is necessary for the greatest productivity and patient satisfaction.
www.rsleads.com/501ht-929

Article: Online Appointment Scheduling for Physician Offices
The American Medical Association recently published the article Online Reservations: Letting Patients Make Their Own Appointments. The paper objectively presents multiple viewpoints, from the New York medical group that eliminated nearly 30 percent of its schedulers with online booking to the Sansum-Santa Barbara Medical Foundation Clinic that reviewed scheduling products from four top IT vendors, yet treads carefully until it solidifies its IT infrastructure.  www.rsleads.com/501ht-930

Is Utility Computing in Your Healthcare Future
If on-demand computing is in your organizations future, here are two articles with enough drill down to make the reads worthwhile. One argues that utility computing isnt really ready for prime time after all, but given the budgetary scrutiny every CIO faces these days, its no wonder the pay-only-for-what-you-use plan is looking so attractive. www.rsleads.com/501ht-933

Web Services for the REST of Us
This easily read 4-page article explores the increased complexity of utilizing Web services in any industry sector and covers REST (Advocates for Representational State Transfer) as an alternative to the complexities, highlighting both pros and cons. For more information, visit www.rsleads.com/501ht-928