Mike O'Meara's ORQA Customer Blog

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 with a listed Patient Safety Organization 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 (Common Formats 1.0), a workorder request for faulty equipment, document participants, assign tasks for later follow up, and quantify cultural challenges or successes through Active Agenda's unique culture measurement solution.

See how simple it is to complete a demonstration WHO surgical checklist by clicking here.  After clicking "Save", check out the various tabs to spawn associated records or click the "Reports" tab to export a completed pdf form version of the WHO checklist form. 

The application theme can be customized to your organization's preference, the checklist is also easily customized (by a system administrator),  and best of all Active Agenda and all of ORQA's healthcare extensions are freely available as open source software under the Reciprocal Public License.

Download Patient Safety Modules for Active Agenda here.

The downloaded module needs to be added to an Active Agenda instance avialable through http://www.activeagenda.com or by downloading ORQA's VMware appliance available for free download for registered users.

Thanks,

Mike 

 

 

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

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

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 really lays the foundation for a solid business continuity plan, as well as capacity management.

I think once an organization gets over the cultural perception that accountability is associated with blame, I think most people find comfort in knowing what they're accountable for and they perform better as well.

 Check out the screen shot from our demo system to see what Homer has on his plate.  Register for a free login account by clicking the login link on the upper right corner of the page and download a virtual appliance to get your own server going today.

 

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.

 Our ultimate goal is to tightly couple the compliance and formal tracking and communications features of Active Agenda  with the rich collaborative features of Wave to bring a comprehensive solution to healthcare to successfully manage the exponentially growing amount of compliance and safety requirements.

 Google Wave is still in its very early stages, but we're actively working on what we can, and one of the first steps is the availability of Google Gadgets based on the OpenSocial API that give realtime visibility in to key metrics tracked within our Active Agenda servers.

Feel free to click the link below to add the Gadget to your own iGoogle start page, or any other page that supports Google Gadgets.

 

 

If you add the Gadget and click the links, you'll be taken to our demo site login screen.  If the username and ID don't prepopulate, you can log in with username: 'demodr' and password: 'orqapass'.

We're eager for feedback for further enhancing the visibility and collaborative features of our applications, so please click the Login link to register on our web site and participate in the Community Forums to share your feedback.  Also feel free to call 888-408-8886 or email us at info@orqa.org anytime.

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 

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 rotating carnival of the best of the medical blogosphere." 

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.

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.