The global healthcare market continues to be influenced by ongoing cost-containment strategies in an attempt to limit growing healthcare expenditure. Focus on work-flow efficiency, patient compliance and patient-centric care are just some of the strategies being employed to streamline spending, particularly in markets where profit margins are becoming increasingly tight. The respiratory care market, including the markets for ventilators and sleep devices, is no exception to this trend; such strategies are driving the use of efficient and cost-effective devices.
Labor expenses can represent between 50 to 60 percent of a hospital’s operating expenses on average. Despite the high cost of sustaining a clinical team of care professionals, many hospitals and physician practices have yet to develop a proactive strategy for managing their future workforce requirements. Part of the struggle with this strategic planning is trying to balance changing workforce demographics, recruitment and retention needs, reimbursement reform, shifting service delivery models and the evolving capabilities of IT systems.
Although the switch to the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases code set (ICD-10) was delayed again last year, the October 1 deadline for this year looks set to be upheld.
Worldwide obesity has more than doubled in the last 25 years; in 2014 over 600 million adults were obese according to statistics provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). The increasing incidence of obesity in both developed and developing countries is proving a considerable challenge to anaesthesia departments.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has recently announced plans to provide immediate coverage for the use of low-dose computerized tomography (CT) for lung-cancer screening in the United States.
Breas Medical AB, the Swedish-based manufacturer of respiratory care devices, is working to expand its global coverage through acquisition of, and partnership with, competing suppliers.
The damage brought by avoidable adverse events in the hospital setting is placing increasing strain on the financial resources of health providers—so much so, that new legislation is being implemented to ensure that such events are correctly documented for future reference. In the U.S., reimbursement of treatment cost is withheld from the provider if the treatment is provided due to the occurrence of an adverse event. Providers, therefore, are increasingly aware of the necessity to collect patient data to make sure that hospitals are adhering to reimbursement and reporting requirements.
The continued pressure on healthcare spending in mature markets is driving demand for cost-effective treatment solutions. In response, home and alternate-site care markets are growing in number and expanding their reach.
With increasing focus to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, the importance of continuously monitoring patients throughout their treatment pathway in the hospital is growing.
On February 5th 2015, Pfizer announced its plan to acquire Lake Forest, Illinois-based Hospira Inc. News surrounding the proposed merger announcement has primarily focused on Hospira’s drug offerings – but what does this mean for Hospira’s infusion pump devices portfolio?
As product innovations such as 4K resolution drive increased clarity of images, there is uncertainty as to how quickly the medical displays market will change.
Carestream launched its first venture into the ultrasound market with the introduction of its Carestream Touch ultrasound system at RSNA 2014.
Philips Healthcare announces its plan to acquire Volcano Corp., an acquisition that further signals the consolidation of the ultrasound market towards clinical application groups.
The world market for industrial Ethernet infrastructure components was estimated to be worth nearly $1.38 billion in 2013 and grew by 7.1% to reach $1.48 billion in 2014, according to a new report published by IHS.
News - More companies seeking faster data access are turning to cloud-based solutions to improve efficiency
OS X EI Captain is now available for easy download and at present, this new revolution is known to all. This lucrative downloading opportunity is now widely grabbed enthusiastically by the dedicated Mac owners as they can enjoy benefits with the latest version of OS X installed. Apart from Mac, OS X EI captain also offers sudden yet astonishing benefits over PC. However installing MAC OS X on non- Apple hardware is a bit tiresome and complicated. This is an easy guidebook, Install OS X El Capitan on VirtualBox on PC.
What is a VirtualBox? VirtualBox is basically a program, over which you can install and eventually run OS X with Intel-based and AMD processor. You would be happy to know that, this latest technology is free to all. Its current available version is exclusively designed to meet domestic net surfing issues successfully.
When you are planning to run Mac OS X 10.11 EI Captain on VirtualBox and that too on windows, it will kill a fraction of your extra energy but when done it is awesome.
So, download Image and install the same and get a first-hand look and feel into the whole virtual set up and how it operates and helps you. Experience is always something worth of experiencing, and OS X on VirtualBox deserves a fraction of your time.
Problem/Question: Should I be able to sign into iMessage? I keep getting an error that there was a problem communicating with the server.
In the first part of this article we saw the legal parameters within which organizations implement internet monitoring.
It’s easy to understand why employees feel concerned about being monitored at work. After all it’s human nature to feel uneasy knowing that someone is watching you all the time. In fact some people feel almost claustrophobic by just the thought of it, while others feel as if there is a serious lack of trust on the part of their employer. It is of course a somewhat sensitive subject because while the employee wants a bit of freedom in the workplace, the employer wants to ensure that there is control over their resources.
If you are an employee, before beginning to question why your employer might monitor your internet usage, put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Think about the investment that has gone into the company, the costs associated with running it (your salary included!) and the security risks associated with downloading or distributing illegitimate material. On top of that, remember that any sort of loss of employee productivity, loss of data, downtime or the legal aspects associated with the downloading of illegitimate material (e.g. indecent images involving children) all result in loss of revenue for the company.
To put things into perspective, let’s take an example of employee productivity loss. Consider a company with 100 employees where the monthly salary bill is £300,000 and 75% of employees spend an average of 1 hour per day browsing personal websites. With an average working week being roughly 35 hours, this should give the company approximately 14,000 man hours per month. If 75 out of the 100 employees (10,500 man hours) spend an average of 1 hour per day browsing personal websites, that’s 1,500 hours (or approximately £32,250 – another headcount!) per month in productivity loss for the company! Given all this, it shouldn’t take you long to see where the employer is coming from when they want to manage internet usage in the workplace.
So where do employers draw the line? In short, employers need to take action as soon as employees start to abuse internet usage in terms of the sites they visit (pornographic, extremist, shopping, etc.) and/or the time they spend on non-work related sites. A complete blackout is not an option as many employees have a genuine need for internet access as part of their everyday job function. Setting out a fair internet usage policy would be a wise first step. Using internet monitoring software will allow you to ensure that this policy is being followed or enforce it via time restrictions (only allowing certain sites to be visited between certain times) or site restrictions (blocking certain categories of sites from being visited), or both.
My recommendation to employers is to use internet monitoring software to keep a record of internet activity in case there is a dispute further down the line, and as an indicator of who the “bad apples” are in the organization. Once there is enough evidence to show that there has been consistent abuse then take necessary measures via the management route first. Coming down hard on employees in the first instance, by blocking all their internet access for example, will probably have a worse effect in the long term.
It would be wise if the employer took a holistic view at the situation of employee internet monitoring and the abuse thereof, when making a decision about what stance to take. After all, if there is moderate personal internet usage in the workplace, yet employees are happy, sticking to their targets and contributing to the bottom line, then you might not even bother bringing the situation up in the first place.
For there to be mutual trust, expectations must be set on both sides. Employers need to make it clear to employees what they see as a fair internet usage policy and ensure that it is clearly communicated from the top down. On the other hand, employees must respect their employer’s wishes and use internet access for personal use in moderation (e.g. using internet for personal use during their lunch break or after working hours for 10 minutes before they hit the gym).
If employees are confident that Internet monitoring will be fair – i.e. if the employer doesn’t abuse its power and doesn’t fake the logs, fo example, to “prove” that somebody has visited a site while he or she hasn’t, then it is easier to accept that one is being watched. In my opinion, Internet monitoring must be used mostly as a way to stop access to insecure sites that can infect a user’s computer and spread the infection over the network than for monitoring who is chatting on Facebook and who isn’t. Productivity can be increased when employees relax on fun sites but moderation is key here.
Rose is correct – if Internet monitoring isn’t regarded as a tool of unjustified repression, then nobody will be scared by it. Probably this fear employees have is not because of their guilty conscience but because of concerns about illegitimate use against them.