JHC March Digital quotables

Quotables from JHC’s March digital issue.

Click here to view JHC’s March digital issue. Among the content:

Get inside the hospital when it comes to data standards

“Inside the hospital we worry about having the right product at the right place at the right time, writes Rosalind Parkinson, administrative director, materiel systems, The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio. “We struggle to track an ever-growing volume of SKUs demanded by clinicians. Some of us get riveted to the magic of automated point-of-use systems close to the bedside. We think by knowing what products were used in exact amounts and on which patients, at exact times, accurate “perfect orders” will float through cyber space to perfectly replenish our cabinets. Some of us get fixated on the “well maintained” item master. This elusive animal is the big catalog, including any product your clinicians could ever want. If you work hard and do everything right, every order will be correct, and when perfect invoices come in, payment flows to happy suppliers!”

 

Learn the cost of pain

The economic cost of pain, including medical bills and lost workdays, is estimated at $100 billion per year in the United States, according to the American Pain Society, a Glenview, Ill.-based multidisciplinary organization of basic and clinical scientists, practicing clinicians, policy analysts and others who research and treat pain and advocate for patients with pain. Back pain alone produces chronic disability in 1 percent of the U.S. population and is the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old, according to the society. As the population ages, chronic pain in the elderly will most likely increase.