Lumetra Healthcare Solutions

It was my pleasure to attend the first annual meeting of Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-listed PSOs, which occurred from September 16–18 in Rockville, MD. Joining me were several Lumetra PSO staff members. The three-day meeting was attended by more than 170 persons representing more than 45 PSOs from around the country. Throughout the conference, I was impressed by both the variety of PSO organizations and the wide range of services developed and offered.

While federal PSO Rules & Regulations are quite complex, the protections afforded are strong and provide uniform Federal privilege and confidentiality protections for patient safety work product submitted to PSOs. These protections can reduce fears of legal liability and increase sharing across different institutions. They offer healthcare providers working with a full service PSO the unique opportunity to better understand, minimize, and respond effectively to their safety risks and events.

Lumetra PSO and AIMS

To meet the clinical, analytic, and technologic patient safety needs… Read More

In the August 2009 issue of LQI, Mark Elson, PhD, a Lumetra manager, discussed the concept of Comparative Effectiveness Research and the federal government’s “massive investment in research to impact clinical decision-making and care delivery processes.”  Even before CER was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and became a feature of several healthcare reform proposals, words of support and pronouncements of opposition have flooded the literature.

The American College of Physicians supports CER as long as the research included cost-effectiveness data. Gail Wilensky, PhD, formerly the Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (now CMS), wrote an editorial in the same issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine imploring that any cost-effectiveness information be kept separate from “comparative clinical effectiveness information.”

And last month, Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote the following about CER: “The road to dehumanizing, bureaucratic health care rationing… Read More

Sahar Nouredini, MSN, PHN has become a member of Lumetra’s team as a public health nurse for our two contracts with the State of California’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch (CLPPB). She will join Lumetra staff located at the California Department of Public Health’s campus in Richmond to conduct monitoring and performance improvement site visits and outreach activities.

In her capacity as PHN, Ms. Nouredini will focus on evaluating the clinical care and case management of local Lead Poisoning Prevention Programs through record review and on-site interviews. She will also assist in the promotion of CLPPB mission, programs, and objectives designed to increase awareness of lead poisoning and lead screening in at-risk children.

Ms. Nouredini has a plethora of clinical, teaching, research, and leadership experience. Most recently, she was a floor nurse in the oncology unit at the University of California-Davis Medical Center and worked as a public health clinical instructor at UC-San Francisco. She obtained her BSN from California… Read More

The 2009 California Diabetes Summit took place in Sacramento on September 2-3.  Organized by the California Diabetes Program, the meeting attracted over 200 healthcare professionals.  Meeting presentations and materials are posted on the Summit Web site.

Rebecca Olson, Lumetra Senior Scientist in the Scientific Analysis department, reported these highlights:

• Keynote speakers included Ann Albright, PhD, RD, Director, Division of Diabetes Translation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Dean Schillinger, MD, Chief, California Diabetes Program at the Department of Public Health and UCSF Professor of Medicine; and Linda Rudolph, MD, MPH, Deputy Director, Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at CDPH.
• All keynote speakers stressed the need to focus on diabetes prevention, rather than just improving diabetes care.  Although quality improvement and HIT efforts have improved diabetes care, the burden of diabetes complications (blindness, kidney failure, etc.) is exploding due to an epidemic of new diabetes cases.
• Wide disparities in diabetes incidence, complications, and healthcare still exist in California.
• Clinics and physician

… Read More