Category: Editorial

9 Essential Tips for Cleaning and Housekeeping In Hospitals

Research found one in 10 hospital patients suffer from a healthcare-associated infection. Housekeeping in hospitals is critical to reducing the spread of disease so patients don’t succumb to new infections.

If you need tips on adequate housekeeping in hospitals, you’ve come to the right place. Here are our nine best tips.

  1. Cleaning and Disinfecting

Hospital cleaning procedures and methods must include cleaning and disinfecting the entire room. When you clean a surface, dirt particles are removed but bacteria may still be present.

Microfiber cloths are fantastic for picking up dirt and germs on a surface. Staff must damp them with clean water or a commercial detergent so it’s effective.

Then, staff must use a disinfectant spray to kill bacteria lingering on the counters and walls. It’s easy to be complacent and only clean large surface areas, but it’s the housecleaning staff’s responsibility to disinfect the hard-to-reach places as lives are at stake.

Housekeepers must follow cleaning label instructions so the hospital room is thoroughly disinfected. If the staff skips any steps or doesn’t wait long enough for the cleaning agent to work, harmful bacteria will still be present.

Staff must also change microfiber cloths frequently to prevent the spread of bacteria throughout the hospital. When cleaning a patient’s room, if a blanket or pillow falls onto the floor, replace them immediately.

Plus, hospital staff should advise patients not to bring too many items into the room like flowers. Remind them that excess clutter could bring in bacteria which could risk the patient’s health.

  1. Choose the Right Disinfectant 

When choosing hospital disinfectant products, consider how effective the cleaning agent is, its safety profile, and whether it will damage surfaces.

Housekeeping staff must determine whether the product’s dwell time will realistically be achieved within the cleaning process. Staff must also have a system with single-use cloths or wipes to reduce the risk of cross-contamination.

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How Mobility Chairs Bridge The Gap Between Walkers and Wheelchairs

For centuries, walkers and wheelchairs have assisted those with mobility impairments move from one place to another. While their functions are still essential, advancements in technology have led to the introduction of mobility chairs like this, which are more adaptable and convenient for their users.

Mobility chairs are easy to maneuver, especially for seniors who need a device to get around but can’t afford, or don’t want to invest in, an expensive electric wheelchair. Before you make a purchase, here is everything you need to know about mobility chairs.

What is a mobility chair?

A mobility chair offers technologically-advanced solutions to indoor and outdoor mobility issues and helps its users move about freely. With its easy-to-use features, this device offers a level of independence to those typically restricted by their mobility limitations.

Mobility chairs can be manually-driven, pushed, or powered. The most attractive feature of these devices is their level of maneuverability and their ability to effortlessly fit in tighter spaces and pilot around sharp corners, making them perfect for home-use. They are also adjustable and customizable for users of every height, weight, and type of mobility restriction.

Why is a mobility chair better than a normal wheelchair?

One major similarity between mobility chairs and standard wheelchairs is that both are designed to help individuals with limited mobility maintain a sense of independence. The two differ in elements of design, which creates a significant impact on their functionality. Here is why a mobility chair may be a better fit than a standard wheelchair.

It’s more affordable

One of the greatest incentives of purchasing a mobility chair is its level of affordability when compared to the everyday wheelchair. Its operation and maintenance costs are minimal and with its simple design, the only running cost is your energy output.

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4 Fool-Proof Tips To Amp Up Digital Marketing of Your Healthcare Organization

A decade back, your marketing strategy would include simply putting up an ad in the local newspaper and distributing pamphlets with your organization’s details on a busy street corner. However, as digitalization is increasing its footprint in every aspect of all industries, marketing for healthcare organizations has also witnessed a drastic change.

If you want to compete with the topmost healthcare companies, you’ll have to stay ahead in the game and acquire as many customers as possible. This can only be done if you have a strong digital marketing strategy. Here’s how you can make one:

  1. Use SEO extensively

A major source of information about your hospital is your official website. Most of the people who schedule an appointment will do so after learning about you through a web search. This makes it important to have a web page that can be displayed as one of the top results in most searches related to the facilities your hospital offers. You will require Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for this.

It’ll help you get an idea of the keywords patients often use while looking up for something. You can then include these key phrases in the content you post on your site along with some tags and your website will be displayed as one of the top results. This will help a lot of new patients learn about your services.

  1. Create Video Content to attract people

With so many things to surf at once, the attention span of the human mind is considerably decreasing. This leads them to lose focus when reading long articles. When you upload content on your site, you must keep in mind that many people won’t be interested in going through the written blog posts, no matter how informative. In order to provide them with the same information in a manner that they’ll actually pay attention to it is to create video content.

Uploading videos will help spread word about your hospital spread quite fast as in a video, you can catch the viewers’ attention by providing them with information while also getting the chance to give them a firsthand look at your hospital.

However, you’ll have to invest quite a lot of time and energy into creating a video than in creating a blog post. Though in the end, all that effort will be rewarded in the form of your organization gaining new patients.

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Managing Physical, Financial and Mental Well-Being From Home (2020 Guide)

Lockdown, Virus, Self-Quarantine

Keeping yourself regimented and in a good state coming out of this necessary lock down is important. That’s why we’ve compiled a short list with tips of things you can do in three key avenues to stay on track, and perhaps even develop some new strategies when you come out of the other end of this pandemic. Read on to find out more on managing physical, financially and mental well-being from home in 2020 and beyond.

Managing your physical well-being

Keeping fit and healthy when stuck indoors can be a difficult task, as nearly all gyms are closed and you’ll naturally do a lot less passive exercise. To help make up for this deficit and keep on top of your health, there are a couple of different things that you can try. Aside from getting that much-needed break from screens to clear your mind, a daily walk, run or bike ride will be a great way to get the circulation going, and should be the first thing you consider as part of this new temporary routine.

If you live in a modern apartment building then you might be lucky enough to have an on-site gym facility that’s available for you to private use, but with gyms closed for the foreseeable, most of us are locked out entirely. A lot of people are having the same idea, so it might be a little bit difficult, but why not try getting some gym equipment for the home? This way you can do some of your workouts while stuck inside.

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How to Eliminate the Biggest Threat to Healthcare Privacy and Security: Print and Capture

By Mark Gross, senior principal product manager, Kofax

Mark Gross

When it comes to data security, healthcare organizations are stuck between a rock and a hard place. To provide proper patient care, their staff needs access to the right information, and quickly. At the same time, the law requires them to protect the sensitive data included in electronic medical records (EMR).

A wide array of devices are used to collect and transmit patient data – including computers, mobile devices, IV pumps and X-ray machines. Today, all of these are connected to the internet, the hospital network and other medical technologies, even though many of them have few, or no, security protocols in place.

The situation’s made even more complex by the public nature of hospital environments. Many connected devices containing sensitive data are left unattended, leaving the entire network exposed. The result’s an increase in cyber and data security threats.

Right now, nearly all healthcare organizations are facing an added challenge brought on by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Many healthcare workers aren’t working in their normal environments, they’re helping in other departments, hospitals and even pop-up field hospitals. With all the displaced healthcare workers, their normal print and capture workflows are left behind with their devices—and the security of the patient data contained in documents printed or scanned elsewhere may be at risk.

Healthcare organizations need a comprehensive security strategy to protect against a breach. The best of these is a systematic approach that tests all connected devices for vulnerabilities. Once identified, security threats should be prioritized so the most severe can be addressed quickly. Regular software updates and patches are just as important, as is replacing outdated equipment with new devices that have security built in.

Because they don’t stand out as threats, multifunction devices, printers and imaging devices are often overlooked during security reviews. In reality, however, both of these handle a lot more data than people realize.

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Telehealth Services Soar In Popularity, Adoption During COVID-19 Pandemic

By Mike Braham, CEO, Trapollo

Mike Braham

As the number of COVID-19 cases increases and social distancing measures remain, telehealth is making an integral contribution to healthcare. You could even say it has become a lifesaver.

A great way to reduce coronavirus spread and promote social distancing, telehealth enables stable patients to stay home while communicating with healthcare providers and receiving virtual medical care. It includes everything from making online appointments to conducting primary care visits through video chat – and is being adopted with greater frequency than ever.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “leveraging telemedicine whenever possible is the best way to protect patients and staff from COVID-19.”

Clearly, telehealth is an important tool that helps protect healthcare professionals and patients alike during these times. Yet even before the recent surge, telehealth visits were changing healthcare relationships for the better.

A January 2019 study published in The American Journal of Managed Care found that telehealth visits provide numerous benefits, including convenience for both the patients and healthcare providers.

The study concluded that virtual visits rated high among most patients, with most saying they would recommend telehealth appointments to family and friends. Patients also said it saved them the time it would take to visit to and from an appointment. Most patients and physicians said communication wasn’t lost through virtual visits.

For healthcare professionals, video visits are more efficient than in-office appointments, allowing them to see more patients each day. Telehealth also gives practices the option to extend hours without staffing an office. And recently, it has allowed healthcare professionals quarantined because of COVID-19 to treat patients remotely.

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7 Innovative Technologies Making Healthcare More Productive and Efficient

By Amanda Jerelyn, health sciences tutor, Academist Help.

Almost all innovations are capable of making health maintenance cost-effective and efficient. It modifies the approach used by health professionals for delivering healthcare services. Secondly, it mostly uses applied science to develop a new kind of output and medication. Thirdly, it develops bright businesses exemplary.

According to expert analysis, the health sector has experienced exponential growth and has headed towards innovation at a high pace. It is vital to have a closer look at a few of the most exciting healthcare innovations that engineers and scientists have managed to come up within these years.

Customer Observant

Modernization in the delivery of health management will lead to more productive, more active, and cheaper medicines for this time, which will continuously improve the healthcare system. For instance, less costly and accessible health services will encourage more individuals to engage in their healthcare. This can allow participants to take control of their intimate health management expenses or a lively program.

Importance of Technological Advancements

The goal of improved access to medication, cost-effective treatment, and less medical errors can be achieved with technological advancements. As an exemplification, infix sensors may allow patients to track their condition more efficiently. IT developments can connect numerous atoll of information to health management organization which can significantly improve decision making and timely delivery of care without any delays. Moreover, the probability of duplication of healthcare services also reduced, which results in cost savings for patients and their families.

The Strength Influencing Innovation

There are several players similar to the health indulgent industries, owning a purpose. Such barnstormers have the support and the ability to impact the policies. Hospitals often curse mechanization driven merchandise ground-breaker for the considerable amount of the healthcare department. American Medical Association (AMA) and the trial attorneys, formidable rivals on the problem of medical malpractice, have worked together on legislation to concede consumers who have been refused medication to sue managed care assurance policies. If innovators consider and seek to deal with the diverse desires of the different parties, they can see their attempts thwarted.

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Fraud Detection with Machine Learning For e-Commerce and Retailers

Hacking, Cyber, Blackandwhite, Crime, Security

There is interesting research in Forbes’ recent article named “How E-Commerce’s Explosive Growth Is Attracting Fraud”. According to the statistics, e-commerce retail sales achieve 209% year-over-year revenue growth. It is expected that this indicator will grow, which means it will seduce fraudsters even more. This is a completely obvious pattern – big money always means a lot of attraction for attackers.

Is there a way to protect your business from these risks? We are sure there are. In this article, we will tell you how eCommerce fraud prevention and detection system work being powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence.

What Is Fraud in e-Commerce?

E-commerce and retail fraud mean any activity aimed at deceiving sellers or buyers in order to seize goods or money. In the e-commerce industry, all fraudulent transactions occur online. As for retail, fraud at the physical point of sale of goods is also possible. AI and ML solutions to encode expertise for detecting fraud in eCommerce and retail can handle both tasks.

What Are the Three Types of Fraud?

In fact, it is possible to identify more types of fraud depending on the nature of the crime, the level of damage, tools for committing fraud, and even unrealized criminal plans. Basically, it is possible to distinguish three main types of fraud.

Mobile Fraud

This is a fairly logical phenomenon – the more users began to use mobile phones for instant transactions, the more scammers thought that these devices might have hidden potential. The infographic below illustrates the current situation with mobile fraud.

Moreover, this is the case when businesses and individuals are equally at risk. Very often, mobile fraud becomes a way of illegally making purchases on behalf of another person.

Identity Theft

Identity Theft is the second type of fraud that is very popular. Who do you think are the most frequent victims of this type of fraud? These are Millennials, the most active users of social networks and the most solvent category of the population at the same time.

The thing is that social networks allow you to make a portrait of a person and collect all the necessary data very easily. It’s not even necessary to hack anything. And comprehensive personal data also easily provides access to e-mail, and other applications, including financial ones.

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