At the Society of Hospital Medicine 2007 Annual Meeting, 300 attendees attended a workshop where the Society of Hospital Medicine's "Handoff Task Force" presented its draft recommendations for handoffs, with goal of that the final recommendations would be applicable in both community and academic settings. Participants had the opportunity to provide additional ideas for the recommendations (anonymously through submission of index cards), and were asked to cast up to 3 votes for recommendations that [...]

At the Society of Hospital Medicine 2007 Annual Meeting, 300 attendees attended a workshop where the Society of Hospital Medicine's "Handoff Task Force" presented its draft recommendations for handoffs, with goal of that the final recommendations would be applicable in both community and academic settings. Participants had the opportunity to provide additional ideas for the recommendations (anonymously through submission of index cards), and were asked to cast up to 3 votes for recommendations that [...]

Hospitalist group directors and administrators may assume that the hospital's enterprise EHR, which likely cost at least tens of millions of dollars to implement, will fulfill the IT needs of hospitalists. This is a common misconception, which is understood when considering actual hospitalist workflow. When a hospitalist's workflow is actually mapped out, an EHRs shortcomings become obvious. Is your group using e-mails to communicate a list of patients for off-service hand-offs? How does your [...]

The December 2014 Publication "Improving Transitions of Care: Hand-off Communications," published by the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, aims to address consistent and widespread failures in Hand-Off Communications. A lack of standardization for hand-off processes, ineffective communication methods, inadequate time committed to the hand-off, among many other failures were highlighted as the root cause for ineffective hand-offs. This Joint Commission publication defines hand-offs as "a transfer and acceptance of patient care responsibility achieved through [...]

Version 2.1 of OnServiceMD, to be released in June 2013, will include several exciting enhancements.  Perhaps most exciting is the new "Group Website."  This integrated feature allows for hospitalist group leaders (or other specialty leaders) get the word out in a single, secure location.  Users can now access any group-specific content, such as group policies and procedures, educational content, and also view the clinical calendar, meeting schedule, and view showcased announcements on the homepage. [...]

OnService Solutions is dedicated to meeting the needs of its customers, and knows that SocialCast by VMware will give customers an easy, new way to submit new ideas for OnServiceMD and to review any issues. To communicate and share, just click on the "Groups" link on the left side of the screen; then select your group. You can then type in anything that you want to share about OnServiceMD in this secure and private [...]

The next major release of OnServiceMD, Version 2.0, is in development, and will be fully implemented at all client sites by fall 2012. This next version on OnServiceMD represents over 2 years of development, and includes over 100 new features which further the OnServiceMD mission to streamline workflow for practicing physicians.  New features and major enhancements are heavily based on user feedback over the last 3 years, and could not have been possible without [...]