The Skylight Blog

Finding a Medication Administration Safety Net Where You Least Expected

While visiting a Skylight client in Texas, a unit administrator told me a story about a patient who had been recently admitted.  On the first day of his stay, the doctor had written for the patient to receive his home medications plus any new ones prescribed.  The normal “once a day” scheduled time for medication administration for this unit is 9am.  The patient was down in radiology when his 9am scheduled meds were due to be given.  The nurse made a note of it and rescheduled them for later upon the patient’s return.  Continue reading →

To HiMSS or not to HiMSS?

That is a question many healthcare marketers ask themselves when preparing for HiMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) annual conference, the biggest healthcare IT event of the year.  We ask whether we can truly make an impact against the super-tanker organizations or how can an emerging company like ours get noticed with over 30,000 attendees.  Continue reading →

Real Life Patient Experience with Orthopedic Surgery and Why Gravity Sucks

It was a gorgeous sunny day in Jamaica. As I enjoyed the tropical scenery (and not paying attention) I slipped and fell injuring my rotator cuff – I needed surgery.

After getting a second opinion (they said I was ugly too), I selected one of the top Orthopedic Surgeons in Charlotte to do the procedure. The pre-surgery consultation was conducted at his office, a beautiful facility with the latest in computers and diagnostic equipment. However, the pre-surgery instruction packet consisted of two obviously copied pages that told me the following: Continue reading →

Patient-Centric: The New Gold Standard

Patient-centric has always been a nice to have.  The industry literature is sprinkled with references to improving the patient experience over the last decade. But times have changed.  Patient-centric organizations and patient-centered systems are now a need to have.  Patient-centric is the new gold standard.   Continue reading →

If only They Had Walked the Clinical Workflow…

When I was in active practice at the bedside and frequently running up and down the halls gathering supplies, medications, towels and linens for my patient care duties, I often thought to myself, “If only those hospital executives asked me how to design a patient care area, I’d make sure everything I needed was close at hand”.  The same goes for implementing any clinical technologies like documentation, order entry, med admin or patient education.  Continue reading →

Value-Based-Purchasing Program Offers Biggest Bang for the Buck

With so many CMS reimbursement dollars at risk based on various hospital performance metrics, it’s hard to know where to focus first.  Clearly all of the quality measures address important aspects of healthcare.  But given the already full plates that hospitals currently have on their tables, some form of prioritization is a necessity.

One straightforward way to prioritize efforts is with the classical “biggest bang for the buck” approach.  How do the various initiatives rank in terms of potential financial impact on the organization? Continue reading →

When You Think of the Optimum Patient Experience, You Don’t Usually Think of World Wrestling

Health care seems to attract people that care about other people.  I was reminded of this the other day when I heard a story about a terminally ill boy:

Michael was a sweet, 12 year old boy who was diagnosed with AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). While receiving end of life treatment at a Skylight client hospital, Michael, being a huge wrestling fan, had just one wish: to watch the WWE Wrestling Event on Pay-Per-View. The hospital network was not equipped to receive Pay-Per-View events so they turned to Skylight. Skylight’s on-site client support team, Shelley Rapp and Johnny Gonzalez immediately went to work, coordinating with Bright House Networks, the local cable company, the hospital facility’s engineers and the Skylight IT team in San Diego, CA. Continue reading →

“Vision – the ideal image or idea of a concept that contains imagination and foresight”

A person will often note individuals that have the ability to dream of “what ifs” in visual fashion as those with a gift or insight of how to solve complex problems. Sometimes those individuals provide the vision for the creation of the next big thing. And though it doesn’t diminish the ability to possess this skill, there should also be equal credit given to the accompanying individual(s) that develop the architectural plan and details that brings that vision to life. This has never been truer than in healthcare today with its complex workflows and time sensitive challenges. In the information system world, it is important to not just have a vision, but a great understanding of architectural design and technologies to support these dreams of how to help patients and hospitals achieve success in improving the patient experience. Continue reading →

Welcome to the new Skylight Healthcare Systems web site

The truth of the matter is that this new site is long overdue—and has been the cause of many a long nights for our marketing and design team as we juggle the endless possibilities and opportunities that a new Web presence provides. More than just renovating, we are creating something completely new with fresh perspective on the rapidly changing healthcare market. In addition to reflecting the advances in our product development and the strides our clients have made in improving the patient experience, we are leveraging “social” channels—and this blog in particular—to provide the most up-to-date forum for sharing new ideas on how Interactive Patient Systems (IPS) can ultimately enhance the care experience for patients and families.

As the IPS market continues to gain momentum—coupled with the fact that more and more healthcare organizations are looking for ways to proactively engage patients and family—Skylight is committed to providing impactful and relevant information and knowledge as to how to effectively harness the capabilities of IPS to improve patient satisfaction efforts. The new web site is one way to help provide that information. Continue reading →

Welcome to Skylight Healthcare’s Blog: Collaborating to Improve the Patient Experience

Health care delivery and the influences on it are rapidly changing. Whenever significant dynamic change takes place in a large critical industry there are opportunities to both win and lose. Winners survive, become leaders and examples in their areas of expertise and prosper, i.e. grow and build more value for their employees and their communities. Losers not so much. Winners anticipate change, become educated in strategies and tools to use that change to provide a better product and service, and lead in adopting those programs. Continue reading →