Blog Entries

ORQA Relinquishing PSO Status

momeara@orqa.org — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 06:00:00 +0100

For the past two years ORQA has been listed as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). It has been an amazing experience to be involved with such a passionate and visionary group of people. However, ORQA has requested to be removed from the list.

The primary driver to request delisting is our current customers have declined to enter in to a PSO contract for various reasons. Since we primarily market to physic [...]

Try ORQA's WHO Surgical Checklist Module

momeara@orqa.org — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:00:00 +0100

Dr. Atul Gawande does a great job explaining why checklists are now necessary in US healthcare in his best-selling new novel, The Checklist Manifesto.

We've implemented the WHO surgical checklist as a module which integrates with other modules in our PSES to allow the clinician to feel safe the checklist data is stored securely and is accessible for later follow-up if needed. They can also trigger other actions when necessary such as a patient safety event report form [...]

Quality Counts is the theme at RSNA 2009

momeara@orqa.org — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0100

I couldn't be more pleased about this year's theme at RSNA.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/rsna-president-calls-focus-quality

Clear Accountability

momeara@orqa.org — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Through most of my career, the most frequent root cause I've seen for large projects failing is a general lack of specific accountability that is clear among stakeholders. That's why when I started working with Active Agenda, one of the features that impressed me most was the ability to assign accountability to an individual for almost every kind of event, policy, guidance, project, and other records. This gives users a concise list of what's "on their plate" and I think [...]

ORQA Direction

momeara@orqa.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Over the past few months I've really been impressed with the information filtering out about Google Wave. It seems to combine the best features of web email such as gmail, with Twitter, Facebook, and Sharepoint, all in one bundle. The best part is their announcement that not only will Google Wave be Open Source, but we won't have to rely on the Google "cloud" because they say they're releasing Wave server software as open source to run private servers.

[...]

Open Source Release as Virtual Appliance coming!

momeara@orqa.org — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Hi all,

I've been hard at work the past couple of weeks on a Virtual Appliance based on Ubuntu 9.04. However, vmbuilder (the tool to build the Virtual Appliance) is having problems with 9.04. I may have to scale back to the more tried-and-true Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, but would lose the ability for a 64 bit machine. I suppose that's an acceptable trade-off, but sets back my release date a bit.

Mike

When things go awry

momeara@orqa.org — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0100

This week's edition of Grand Rounds is hosted by Paul Levy's exemplary blog, "Running a Hospital". He has collected some very powerful stories under a post titled, "When Things Go Awry" that truly capture why many of us do what we do. I know I find reassurance that I'm doing the right thing with ORQA. This is a must-read for anyone in health care.

For those of you new to blogging, "Grand Rounds is the the weekly [...]

Refreshed ORQA web site

momeara@orqa.org — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

I've completely refreshed the ORQA web site with many new features including self-registration, public forums, and comment system (not to mention new services offered). Please look around and keep in mind we're still working out the kinks. Feel free to drop us a line at info@orqa.org or leave a comment on the site.

Medicine has entered the B-17 phase...

momeara@orqa.org — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

That quote is from a great New Yorker article written by Atul Gawande. It was published a little over a year ago, but the airline crash and exemplary performance from the pilot this week brought the analogy mentioned in this article back in to focus.

Aviatio [...]

Great Post from Neupert on Health regarding policy

support@orqa.org — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Here is a great blog post from Peter Neupert, VP of healthcare over at Microsoft. He's testifying in the Senate this week on IT investment in healthcare. He makes some excellent points. He ends with, "health enterprises should invest in building and sharing health data assets that enable them to have a culture of process improvement over time."

US Airlines go 2 years without fatality

support@orqa.org — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Interesting article. Airlines have moved over a billion people in this economy without a single fatality. Healthcare still has a lot to learn from the airlines. The last sentence is amazing, a child today is more likely to become President than die in a plane crash.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/01/12/us.air.safety/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

86% of Hospital Incident Mgt. Systems Have Little or no MD Participation

support@orqa.org — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

The results of this AHRQ-funded survey that was carried out by the gov't think tank RAND, strongly confirms what I've known for quite some time and is specifically why ORQA was founded. However, until now I'd been unable to quantify how extensive the lack of physician participation in adverse event reporting really is. Seeing these results is stunning to me and is unfortunate for our healthcare system, but on the positive side it justifies ORQA's mission and business m [...]

New Online Radiologist Peer Review Demo

support@orqa.org — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Greetings!

We've made a demo of our Peer Review solution available online without pre-registering.

This coincides with special end-of-year pricing for a Peer Review only solution.

Please be sure to click both the Integrated Solution Link as well as the full application login to access the dashboard and perform searches, etc.

To see an example of how our Peer Review Solution works, click here. Clicking the link would be similar to selecting a [...]

It's that time of year again...

support@orqa.org — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Well, I'm in Chicago for RSNA 2008. I'm really excited about being here this year. Although I'd hoped last year that ORQA would be exhibiting this year, we spent most of our marketing budget at a few smaller shows and just didn't see the return so I decided to hold off this year.

It's been a great week for us, so I'm really looking forward to sharing all our progress. I have some great meetings lined up. Also, thanks to the guys at Active Agenda, we've rolled out an upgrade to s [...]

Change Comes From the Bottom Up

support@orqa.org — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Check out this video

They're obviously talking about the presidential election, but the commentator exactly nailed what ORQA is all about. For many health care IT projects, a centralized top down "enterprise standard" is considered best practice for large organizations, basically the cathedral approach described. It has its be [...]

Financial Risk Management

support@orqa.org — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:00:00 +0100

The economic crisis has created quite a whirlwind in radiology. Combine that with the news that the DRA has effectively cut imaging reimbursements by $1.7B, and we're all looking for ways to eliminate waste in imaging.

ORQA's core software is designed for use by financial institutions, and many of our modules were designed to be Basel II compliant for managing Operational Risk (OpRisk). Basel II is an international standard for determining how much capital banks are required to [...]

ORQA solution runs on netbook

support@orqa.org — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Greetings, I picked up an Asus eee micro-notebook (aka netbook) today with the hopes of a lighter load for doing demos and presentations on the road. It was a breeze to install eee-ubuntu and get our application core installed and running on this little thing. I'm even writing this blog entry on the miniature keyboard.

Take care,

Mike

Who owns PACS, IT or Radiology?

support@orqa.org — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0100

This argument is as old as PACS itself, and I've seen my fair share of battles over the years. However, in this latest iteration of the argument bubbling up by Dr. Chang and Dr. Channin's discussion at SIIM, I'd have to argue that their perspectives are a bit different than the majority of hospitals. In an academic setting, the school of medicine has an academic mission to be on the bleeding edge of technology, test new hypotheses, be the early adopter. They serve the needs of [...]

AHRQ has some great advice

support@orqa.org — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

The AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) has posted a great document on implementing High Reliability Organization concepts in a healthcare environment. They did a great job explaining the vision around which our tools are built. ORQA's solutions enable the execution of these concepts in a way that aims to break down silos of information and promote open communication.

RBMA 2008

support@orqa.org — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

I got home from Las Vegas late last night and pretty tired after 8 days on the road. The RBMA Radiology Summit was our first "official" conference where we exhibited. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the experience. The RBMA staff and members are all wonderful people to deal with. Also, our "shoestring budget" booth received significantly more traffic than most of the better established vendors in our row. Here's Roland in the booth.