What’s New on the Pioneer Blog?

Innovative health care delivery, hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and the OpenNotes demonstration project were hot topics on Pioneering Ideas over the past several weeks.  

• Sanjeev Arora, M.D., director of Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) shared his experiences and perspective on how to tackle health care delivery issues in rural and underserved areas.  Dr. Arora outlines real examples of how Project ECHO’s system is working in New Mexico.
• Steve Downs recently shared his thoughts on Open Notes, a demonstration project at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center where patients will have access to their physician’s notes about a visit.  This month, the team announced the full details of the 12-month study funded by a Pioneer grant.  What will be the outcomes from patients having full, real-time access to the notes from their doctors’ visits?
• In early July, Ramanan Laxminarayan of Extending the Cure co-wrote an editorial that sparked the question: Can best practices in infection control reduce HAIs and save billions of dollars a year? Ari Kramer talked about this and also discussed research by Health Care Without Harm that explores whether alternative cleaning strategies for the health care sector could prevent infection in a way that would be both healthier and friendlier to the environment.  Take a look and let us know what you think.

Keep up with Pioneering Ideas to see what inspires us next month – or join the conversation and add your own ideas. And don’t forget to follow Pioneer Portfolio on Twitter for real-time updates.