Objectives: This study explores the results of a rapidly implemented no-cost gratitude intervention designed to address student distress during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This intervention focused on shared gratitude journaling with a postimplementation survey of well-being using elements of Seligman's PERMA (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) model of well-being.
Methods: Journaling took place from November 2020 to April 2021 using a convenience sample ( = 57) from the Master of Science in Health Informatics program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Background: Experiential learning through simulation allows students to apply didactic knowledge to real-world situations. Tabletop simulation allows for the exploration of a variety of topics, including cybersecurity in health care. Due to its low frequency, yet high-risk nature, simulation is a perfect educational modality to practice responding to a cybersecurity attack.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Although research has continued to show that substance use disorders (SUDs) can be treated effectively with evidence-based treatment, there continues to be gaps in access, and utilization remains low. Alternative SUD treatment methods, including telemedicine, are increasingly being explored to reach patients where traditional in-person treatment approaches are inaccessible. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore SUD treatment retention, specifically comparing telemedicine-delivered opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment with a traditional in-person treatment delivery approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The semantics of entities extracted from a clinical text can be dramatically altered by modifiers, including entity negation, uncertainty, conditionality, severity, and subject. Existing models for determining modifiers of clinical entities involve regular expression or features weights that are trained independently for each modifier.
Methods: We develop and evaluate a multi-task transformer architecture design where modifiers are learned and predicted jointly using the publicly available SemEval 2015 Task 14 corpus and a new Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) data set that contains modifiers shared with SemEval as well as novel modifiers specific for OUD.
Objectives: Communication with patients and their families/caregivers to facilitate informed decision making is an integral part of patient/family-centered care. Due to the high coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection rates and limited personal protective equipment, healthcare systems were forced to restrict patient visitors, limit patient-provider interactions, and implement other changes in treatment protocols that disturbed traditional communications and risked eroding patient/family-centered care and adversely affected patient satisfaction. This article focuses on changes in patient experience in two dedicated COVID-19 units of an academic medical center located in the US South as a result of the enhanced communication process implemented specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNursing homes expressed concern about potential severe adverse financial outcomes of COVID-19, with worries extending to the possibility of some facilities facing closure. Maintaining a strong financial well-being is crucial, and there were concerns that the pandemic might have significantly impacted both expenses and income. This longitudinal study aimed to analyze the financial performance of nursing homes during COVID-19 pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence-based SUD treatments are available, yet utilization remains low demonstrating the need to utilize alternative treatment delivery methods. We assess the effectiveness of an SUD treatment program delivered via telemedicine and in-person mode over 12 months. 40% of the intervention group remained engaged and 46% remained opioid free.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSome of the most vexing issues with the COVID-19 pandemic were the inability of schools and work areas to track symptoms. Technology solutions to mitigate repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic include tools that provide guidelines and interfaces to influence behavior, reduce exposure to the disease, and enable policy-driven avenues to return to a sense of normalcy (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStud Health Technol Inform
January 2024
Natural Language Processing can be used to identify opioid use disorder in patients from clinical text1. We annotate a corpus of clinical text for mentions of concepts associated with unhealthy use of opiates including concept modifiers such as negation, subject, uncertainty, relation to document time and illicit use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 was legislated to reduce health care costs, improve quality, and increase patient safety. Providers and organizations were incentivized to exhibit meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) systems in order to achieve this objective. EHR adoption is an expensive investment, given the resources and capital that are invested.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate the impact of implementing a comprehensive secondary onboarding and development program within a hospital medicine group at a large tertiary academic medical institution.
Methods: This was a mixed-methods study with physician and advanced practice providers (APPs) at an academic medical institution.
Results: For quantitative methods, improvement in competencies was determined using a pre-and posttest for APPs and pre- and postevaluation scores from collaborating physicians.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
September 2023
Background: Foundational domains are the building blocks of educational programs. The lack of foundational domains in undergraduate health informatics (HI) education can adversely affect the development of rigorous curricula and may impede the attainment of CAHIIM accreditation of academic programs.
Objective: This White Paper presents foundational domains developed by AMIA's Academic Forum Baccalaureate Education Committee (BEC) which include corresponding competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) that are intended for curriculum development and CAHIIM accreditation quality assessment for undergraduate education in applied health informatics.
Objective: This article reports on the alignment between the foundational domains and the delineation of practice (DoP) for health informatics, both developed by the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Whereas the foundational domains guide graduate-level curriculum development and accreditation assessment, providing an educational pathway to the minimum competencies needed as a health informatician, the DoP defines the domains, tasks, knowledge, and skills that a professional needs to competently perform in the discipline of health informatics. The purpose of this article is to determine whether the foundational domains need modification to better reflect applied practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Some of the most vexing issues with the COVID-19 pandemic were the inability of facilities and events, such as schools and work areas, to track symptoms to mitigate the spread of the disease. To combat these challenges, many turned to the implementation of technology. Technology solutions to mitigate repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic include tools that provide guidelines and interfaces to influence behavior, reduce exposure to the disease, and enable policy-driven avenues to return to a sense of normalcy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEmergency department (ED) crowding and its main causes, exit block and boarding, continue to threaten the quality and safety of ED care. Most interventions to reduce crowding have not been comprehensive or system solutions, only focusing on part of the care procession and not directly affecting boarding reduction. This position paper proposes that the ED crowding problem can be optimally addressed by applying a systems approach using predictive modeling to identify patients at risk of being admitted to the hospital and uses that information to initiate the time-consuming bed management process earlier in the care continuum, shortening the time during which patients wait in the ED for an inpatient bed assignment, thus removing the exit block that causes boarding and subsequently reducing crowding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Ultrasound guidance has become standard of care in hospital medicine for invasive bedside procedures, especially central venous catheter placement. Despite ultrasound-guided bedside procedures having a high degree of success, only a few hospitalists perform them. This is because these are usually performed by radiologists or in the setting of trainee-run procedure teams.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services began implementing the Patients Over Paperwork (POP) initiative in response to clinicians reporting burdensome documentation regulations. To date, no study has evaluated how these policy changes have influenced documentation burden.
Methods: Our data came from the electronic health records of an academic health system.
Objectives: Alabama's health professions schools have many common goals when it comes to educating their students about substance use disorder (SUD) and pain, but a statewide consistent SUD and pain management curriculum does not exist in Alabama. The ALAbama Health professionals' Opioid and Pain management Education (ALAHOPE) project set out to create an interprofessional curriculum around SUD and pain management that all Alabama health professions schools can use to promote consistent evidence-based teaching and a patient-centered approach around these two topics. An adapted form of the Kern model of curriculum development was used to guide the project.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealth care systems continue to struggle with preventing 30-day readmissions to their institutions. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are important predictors of repeat visits to the hospital. In many health systems, SDOH data are limited to those variables that are most relevant to care delivery or payment (eg, race, gender, insurance status).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLearning Health Systems (LHS) require a workforce with specific knowledge and skills to identify and address healthcare quality issues, develop solutions to address those issues, and sustain and spread improvements within and outside the organization. Educational programs are tasked with designing learning opportunities that can meet these organizational needs. This manuscript explores different mechanisms for addressing challenges to creating educational programs to prepare individuals who can work in and lead LHS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Electronic health records (EHRs) are the electronic records of patient health information created during ≥1 encounter in any health care setting. The Health Information Technology Act of 2009 has been a major driver of the adoption and implementation of EHRs in the United States. Given that the adoption of EHRs is a complex and expensive investment, a return on this investment is expected.
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