Hospital rounding--EHR's impact.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to understand the time spent on various tasks during physician inpatient rounds and to examine the new electronic health records (EHRs) impact on time distribution. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Trained observers shadowed hospital physicians to record times for various tasks before and after EHR implementation. FINDINGS: Electronic records did not improve efficiency. However, task times were redistributed. Physicians spent more time reviewing patient charts using time saved from miscellaneous work. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: The study focusses solely on work distribution and the changes it underwent. It does not include quality measures either on patient results or physician satisfaction. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: As EHR provides rich information and easier access to patient records, it motivates physicians to spend more time reviewing patient charts. Hospital administrators seeking immediate returns on EHR investment, therefore, may be disappointed. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Unlike previous work, this study was conducted in a non-teaching hospital, providing a task-time comparison without any educational and team factor influence. The result serves as a benchmark for many community hospital managers seeking to address the same issue.

A Novel and Cost-Effective Drive Circuit for Supplying a Piezoelectric Ceramic Actuator with Power-Factor-Correction and Soft-Switching Features.

This paper proposes a novel and cost-effective drive circuit for supplying a piezoelectric ceramic actuator, which combines a dual boost AC-DC converter with a coupled inductor and a half-bridge resonant DC-AC inverter into a single-stage architecture with power-factor-correction (PFC) and soft-switching characteristics. The coupled inductor of the dual boost AC-DC converter sub-circuit is designed to work in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM), so the PFC function can be realized in the proposed drive circuit. The resonant tank of the half-bridge resonant inverter sub-circuit is designed as an inductive load, so that the two power switches in the presented drive circuit can achieve zero-voltage switching (ZVS) characteristics. A 50 W-rated prototype drive circuit providing a piezoelectric ceramic actuator has been successfully implemented in this paper. From the experimental results at 110 V input utility-line voltage, the drive circuit has the characteristics of high power factor and low input current total-harmonic-distortion factor, and two power switches have ZVS characteristics. Therefore, satisfactory outcomes from measured results prove the function of the proposed drive circuit.