ORQA blog

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.

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.  

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