2016: The Year of the Zettabyte

My last post on Big Data was way back February 3, 2013! This weekend I hope to continue on Big Data posts and post it by early next week,

However this evening I stumbled upon a new infographic related to my Big Data post posted February 3, 2013. In that post I wrote about the volume of data that is increasing exponentially on an annual basis and to give you an idea of how that is developing in two infographics, courtesy of the online storage site Mozy, and Cisco to help you visualise the meaning of pentabytes of data and how it expands further into zettabytes sometime into the future.

Well, by end of 2016, the world according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, will cross the Zettabyte threshold largely contributed by video streaming, phone lines or video calling and mobile streaming accelerated via extremely fast Internet speeds and data transfers.

The following infographic is a visual of how big zettabytes will be.

INFOGRAPHIC - 2016 - The Year Of The Zettabyte V6

References:

  1. XO Communications, Are you Ready for 2016: The Year of the Zettabyte, viewed 28 March 2013, <http://www.xo.com/services/Pages/2016-The-Year-of-the-Zettabyte.aspx>

Findings revealing workarounds to overcome design flaws in electronic health records (EHRs)

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), which directly observed clinical workflows at primary care clinics in different healthcare organisations in Boston and Indianapolis, USA found that both doctors and medical staff used both paper-based and computer-based workarounds to overcome design flaws in their electronic health records (EHRs).

Here are some examples from the study’s findings of workarounds created when practices are found not using the EHR in the way it was designed for, due to the real and perceived deficiencies ot the EHRs.

workarounds-for-EHR-flaws

References:

  1. Ken, T, 2013, Healthcare Workarounds Expose EHR Flaws, InformationWeek Healthcare, viewed 26 March 2013, < http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/electronic-medical-records/healthcare-workarounds-expose-ehr-flaws/240151710 >

The need for discharge planning and discharge planning documentation

The attending doctor is responsible for a patient’s care and determines the patient’s readiness for discharge based on the policies and relevant criteria or indications of referral and discharge established by the hospital policy guiding the referral or discharge of patients .

Referring or discharging a patient to a health care practitioner outside the hospital, another care setting, home, or family is based on the patient’s health status and need for continuing care or services.

Continuity of care requires special preparation and considerations for some patients, such as for discharge planning.

Discharge Planning is a process which is initiated as soon as possible upon inpatient admission, that is during the initial assessment which includes determining the need for patients for whom discharge planning is critical due to age, lack of mobility, continuing medical and nursing needs, or assistance with activities of daily living, among others.

The discharge planning process includes a mechanism to identify those patients for whom discharge planning is critical. A discharge planning worksheet is generated based on a list of criteria and used as an assessment tool by a case manager or an utilisation manager (if there is one at your hospital, or in most instances initiated by a nurse), to identify patients who may require post-hospital services on discharge for inpatients once their acute phase of illness has passed. This worksheet is used to develop the Case Management Note which is a progress note documented by the case manager or an utilisation manager (if there is one at your hospital, or in most instances by a nurse),which outlines a discharge plan that includes case management/social services provided and patient education.

Discharge planning involves discussions on discharge plans with patients and their families on admission and during the hospital stay. A discharge plan is prepared to help determine home needs, assist in planning for needed medical equipment, helps in choosing a facility for care if the patient is unable to return home, and facilitates discharge to home or transfer to another facility.

The Case Management Note is not the same document as the Discharge Note which is the final progress note documented by the attending doctor, which includes details like the patient’s discharge destination (e.g., home), discharge medications, activity level allowed, and follow-up plan (e.g., office appointment).

Health Information Management (HIM) / Medical Records (MR) practitioners do take note that Health Information Management / Medical Records Management services does not include Discharge Planning. However HIM / MR practitioners can expect to find a Case Management Note included in some patients’ medical records.

HIM / MR practitioners who are members of a closed Medical Record Review, need to be aware that the Medical Record Review Tool will assess and determine the degree of compliance with standards and elements of performance relating to discharge planning given to some patients as required by the Joint Commission International  (JCI) Standard AOP.1,11 which states that “The initial assessment includes determining the need for discharge planning.”, if you are working at a hospital which is already JCI accredited or seeking JCI accreditation status or undergoing re-survey for JCI accreditation status.

I like to point out that the Medical Record Review Tool has an error that shows the JCI Standard AOP.1.8.1 (Early screening for discharge planning) as found in the JCI Hospital Survey Process Guide, 3rd Edition, Effective January 2008 instead of showing the JCI Standard AOP.1,11 with regards to compliance in discharge planning. You can find my corrected version of this JCI recommended Medical Record Review Tool from this link (the form will open in a new tab of your current window).

References:

  1. Joint Commission International, 2010, Joint Commission International Accreditation Standards For Hospitals, 4th edn, JCI, USA
  2. Michelle, AG & Mary, JB 2011, Essentials of Health Information Management: Principles and Practices, 2nd edn, Delmar, Cengage Learning, NY, USA

Nation-wide electronic patient record for Poland

Poland will implement a comprehensive web-based electronic patient
record (EPR) project which is in its beginning phase and a comprehensive introduction will be available starting in 2014. Read more about this project from this link (this link will open in a new tab in your current browser). This press release from CompuGroup Medical AG, Poland was received via email courtesy of Arunasalam P., Malaysia.

ICD 11 – The Content Model, Part 1

ICD 11 book coverThe Content Model of an ICD entity in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) forms the basis of this succeeding post to the earlier post ICD 10 & ICD 11 Development – How, What, Why & When (this link will open in a new tab of your current window).

It is not my intention to write volumes on Content Model, rather I shall attempt to share the basics of this model in its simplest form that I have understood as compared to ICD 10.

We know that ICD 10  had evolved to include morbidity classification from its original design to record causes of death. We are aware that ICD is also used for reimbursement (in countries like in the US), and also used in specialty areas such as oncology and primary care.

Then we also know that from the ICD-10 tabular list found in Volume 1, ICD 10 is organised as a monohierarchy. Monohierarchy is a top-down classification. Perhaps the following example of a monohierarchy among Felidae, the biological family of the cats will make things clearer of what I wish to write  about how ICD 10 codes are organised.

Monohierarchy

ICD 10 uses letters for an initial broad categorisation (e.g., I for diseases of the circulatory system) and combined with digits (e.g. I00 to I02) for each successive level of child codes. Sibling codes (e.g. I01.0 and I01.1) are considered to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive, requiring the use of residual categories—“unspecified” and “other”—at each level, (e.g. I01.9 Acute rheumatic heart disease, unspecified).

A code may have associated inclusions (I10 Essential (primary) hypertension Incl: High blood pressure) and exclusions (e.g. I01.0, Excl: when not specified as rheumatic [I130.-]).

Inclusions are exemplary terms or phrases that are synonymous with the title of the code or terms representing more specific conditions (e.g. I21 Acute myocardial infarction Incl.:myocardial infarction specified as acute or with a stated duration of 4 weeks (28 days) or less from onset).

Most exclusions are either conditions that might be thought to be children of a given condition but, because they occur elsewhere in the classification, must be excluded from appearing under it (e.g. I25.2 for old myocardial infarction); others are codes representing possible co-occurring conditions that should be distinguished from the condition (e.g.I23 Certain current complications following acute myocardial infarction i.e to say co-occuring or concurrent with acute myocardial infarction (I21-I22).

As I have posted in the posts ICD 11 – history of the development of the ICD from 1853 to 2015 (this link will open in a new tab of your current window), ICD 11 is been developed as a participatory Web-based process.

The development of ICD-11 is aimed to create an information infrastructure and workflow processes that utilises knowledge from existing hierarchies of codes and titles found in ICD 10 Volume 1 as I have elaborated above, and supplementary volumes of rules (found in ICD 10 Volume 2) and indices (found in ICD 10 Volume 3).

This new ICD 11 information infrastructure captures the knowledge that underpins the definition of an ICD entity as we know of it today – again as I have elaborated above, which will thus aid the review of best scientific evidences to enable the definition of diseases and health conditions, encoding of the eotiology and the anatomical and physiological aspects of the disease, and mappings to other terminologies and ontologies.

Initially the workflow of the collaborative development of new content and proposed changes, review and approval processes, and the creation of draft classifications for field testing was undertaken by Topic Advisory Groups (TAGs) for various specialty areas.

The workflow continued with the Alpha Draft of ICD-11 revision process with comments and suggestions by interested parties collected in a social process on the Web and  ended by May 2010, and continued with the Beta Draft with field trials of draft standards.

The Alpha and Beta drafts have produced the new ICD 11 information infrastructure based on the Content Model for ICD 11 which represents ICD entities in a standard way, each ICD entity defined by “parameters” representing different dimensions – a parameter expressed using standard terminologies known as “value sets” that specifies the structure and details of the information that should be maintained for each ICD category in the revision process and which thus allows for computerisation.

In the next post, I shall post about the basic structure of the Content Model.

References:

  1. International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, The Tabular List Volume 1 Version 2010, 2010 edn, World Health Organisation, Geneva, Switzerland
  2. World Health Organisation, 2012, Content Model, viewed 18 March 2013, < http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/revision/contentmodel/en/index.html >