Lantana Group Blog

Kristin Schrock, Technical Writer

Often dubbed (somewhat mockingly, I would say) the “hand hygiene police,” Infection Preventionists (IPs) are tasked with a broad set of responsibilities aimed at preventing and controlling infections within healthcare settings. One of an IP’s biggest responsibilities is healthcare-associated infection (HAI) surveillance and submission of HAI data to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NSHN) to…

After a year of when the pandemic dictated most decisions, we can finally see the light at the end of a dark tunnel. A vaccine! It has been a long year of learning, adjustments, sacrifices, and much more. We have adjusted (mostly) to new “co-workers,”—spouses, pets, and children. The nurses at Lantana continue to be…

No matter how far away a nurse gets from the frontline, we remain nurses at heart. A perfect example of this is our very own, Robin Williams, RN and Zabrina Gonzaga, RN. Zabrina practiced as a nurse and then as a nurse practitioner for 10 years prior to becoming a nurse informaticist in 2006, and…

In honor of U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) and Lantana’s continued partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we provide an update on the nation’s primary system for tracking inpatient antibiotic use and resistance: The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Use and Resistance (AUR) Module. USAAW is an annual week-long observance…

This year is deemed the Year of the nurse to recognize the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth and the release of the World Health Organization’s first State of the World’s Nursing Report. The nurses at Lantana take great pride in the recognition that our profession has received for its major impact on healthcare worldwide.…

I first thought SAS was a coding program used for cleaning up and validating large amounts of data and for generating reports. Since I had never coded before, it seemed too complicated, and I thought I could just use Excel as a data analysis tool. But SAS is more efficient than manually validating data or…

When I was growing up, I wanted to become a veterinarian because I love animals. However, when I was twelve, my grandfather, who had a chronic health condition, came down with influenza A and passed away after only three days in the hospital. As my family sat with him, the nurses came in to monitor his condition frequently to make him comfortable. Their compassionate care to him was wonderful, but they didn’t just care for him.

I always knew I wanted to become a nurse. I wanted to save the world by helping others, and as a young adult, I thought helping others always meant being at the patient’s side.

Growing up, my role models were family friends who were registered nurses. They were compassionate and confident. I wanted to be like them. After graduating nursing school, I went to work in surgical ICU. Looking back now, I realize I have always relied on and have learned to trust technology even when it was electronic devices connected to my ICU patients.

I took an indirect path to nursing informatics. I started on my journey early—as a candy striper volunteer in a tertiary care center at the age of 13. This experience was my first contact with patients in a hospital setting.

Over the past 25 years, my nursing journey has taken me down different professional paths. At each crossroad in my career, I used the Servant Leadership philosophy as my compass to guide my journey. During my master’s program in nursing, I read Servant Leadership in Nursing by Mary Elizabeth O’Brien. I was finally able to put a…

As a former home health nurse, I know firsthand the importance of real-time patient health information. Today’s nurses can easily document and upload information that is instantaneously accessible to other health team members. But it wasn’t always so. When I was starting out, documenting an initial assessment and care plan for a new home health…

Today, as a Senior Nurse Informaticist at Lantana, I am part of a team of clinical, program and policy analysts, working with IT engineers to develop standards-based solutions permitting interoperable—platform independent—exchange of health information. Twenty-five years ago, I was a young nurse starting out—just look at me here at my “capping and pinning” ceremony! Here…

All around the world, May 12 is celebrated as International Nurses Day. It marks the end, in the U.S., of National Nurses Week—a time to honor and recognize nurses for their contribution to health care. May 12 is also the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the nineteenth-century English nurse who became legendary for her work…

The PGHD Revolution With the rise in popularity of mobile health apps and wearable technology, the volume of patient-generated health data (PGHD) is rapidly outpacing providers’ ability to incorporate it into care. In fact, almost half of U.S. smart phone owners report using a mobile health tracking app. These new technologies create data…

AUR is more than an airport code for a commune in southern France (Aurillac, if you are curious). AUR is an important facet of public health. Using the Antimicrobial Use and Resistance (AUR) reporting module, hospitals can report and analyze antimicrobial use and/or resistance data.

The Clinical Quality Language is a new expression language that defines logic for quality artifacts. With its introduction into eCQMs, the industry has taken the first step towards a harmonized standards landscape.

Ongoing research examines the impact of applying sociodemographic status (SDS) risk-adjustment to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) quality reporting programs. The main driver for investigation is a community assertion that SDS risk-adjustment is necessary to accurately gauge the quality of care given to patients of diverse backgrounds. Contrary to popular belief, recent research produced evidence that SDS risk-adjustment has little to no impact on hospital performance ratings.

Co-authored by: Edward P. Ambinder, MD Jeremy L. Warner, MD The cancer journey, from diagnosis to treatment to survivorship, involves multiple interventions and stakeholders. Survivorship begins after completing a bulk of the definitive treatment, and addresses psychosocial developments, as well as late medical issues, resulting from treatment. In 2014, the American Society of Clinical Oncology…

The Long-Term and Post-Acute Care (LTPAC) Health IT (HIT) Collaborative held its 10th Annual Summit in Baltimore at the end of June. HIT leaders, policy makers, providers, and vendors, convened to discuss industry initiatives and priorities from the Collaborative’s latest Roadmap for Health IT in LTPAC. We participated in and attended several sessions on continuity of care and quality reporting.