Definition Of Patience

Digitizing Healthcare Involves Grasping the Scope, Finding Value of EHR Data

With all of those different aspects of electronic healthcare, a hospital or physician practice has to try and interpret what all the data means — and how it could be used to improve patient safety, control costs, understand efficiency of treatments and other healthcare benchmarks. Three data specialists from information management consulting firm Earley & Associates — President and CEO Seth Earley, Vice President of Marketing Gary Kahn and Senior Consultant Christian Reich, MD — give three areas of focus that can make the vast world of EHR data easier to grasp for hospitals and healthcare providers. Mr. Earley notes there are two ends of the spectrum in regard to adopting EHRs. One end is the institutional, academic viewpoint, which is very in-depth but also very slow-moving. The other end is the hype-driven, market-facing viewpoint, which focuses on the readiness of implementation but also lacks depth and patience. While information technology and EHRs in particular are becoming the new gold standard in hospitals, there has to be a middle ground, Mr. Earley says, because application of an EHR system without a plan for that data can lead to chaos. Mr. Earley stated there are actions hospitals and other healthcare organizations can do to ease implementation. Making sure procedures and practices can be codified and organized easily and establishing approaches to analyze data for trends in safety, cost reduction and efficacy are ways EHR data can be cleaned up and applied to ultimately make patients' lives better, he said. Hospitals converting to EHRs know it is both time-consuming and overwhelming, Mr. Kahn says. While there are benefits of having patient data in digital form, addressing what patients' information actually means is one of the first hurdles any healthcare provider will have to consider. "As the industry transitions, there is going to be a development of standards," Mr. Kahn says. "One of challenges is how to map and harmonize data into new standards" to improve healthcare and patient experience. Mr. Earley says there is the hope that EHRs will be able to adopt and in some cases create new healthcare standards and provide insight for improvements. For example, EHRs retain information on patient medication and effective treatments, but can that data improve future treatments and perhaps reduce costs for providers? Mr. Earley says EHRs need to be standardized in order for health data to be aggregated into meaningful trends.

Athlete Spotlight: Amara Sama – The Definition of Patience | Cover ...

Ost of you probably know what it feels like to get yelled at for something you wish you could change with the snap of your fingers.  Imagine competing and knowing you have the ability to be one of the best but when you line up to compete you fail. When you fail, you fail big. Dead last at a Big 12 meet, coming to practice frustrated and not understanding how.  For every single athlete who has been told be patient, to every athlete who is waiting for their time. This one is for you.

Now I may be a little I bias on this story because Amara is my training partner but…  I am also in the best position to tell his story like no other, because I was there through the struggle.

The Struggle

He transferred to Iowa State last year and he and I were the lone short sprinters on the squad. I could not believe his strength, and even up to this day I am not even close to him in that category. You can see every detail of this kids muscle and he rarely shows pain, or says much just comes to practice ready to work. When you say someone has more power than they even know what to do with, that’s him.

Now any athlete that has ever come out of a pair of starting blocks can attest to the fact that it is very technical and you need a coach to help you improve your skills. When I first started seeing him come out of the blocks it was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. He had no form at all just power, but you know what he would SPANK me every time we came out the blocks together.

I can honestly say I went into the first meet thinking he was going to destroy me because of everything we did in practice…this never happened. It was actually the opposite. The next meet came I said the same, and the next, and the next.

Through this whole time our coach would rip on Sama in practice, he never yelled or anything but he corrected so many of his mistakes that I knew it was almost impossible for him to think about running fast.  How could he when everything he did was wrong?

Now I have been an athlete long enough to know when an athlete is broken in spirit and ready to quit.  After Big 12 Conference Championships, he had the worst performance of his indoor season right after the best week of practice of his indoor season.

What Made Him a Soldier?

Through the hard times he was:

Lost,

Confused,

Disappointed,

Broken,

Upset.

What made him different is that giving up never even crossed his mind.