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Partnerships between health care systems and literacy groups would be a good way to improve communication between patients with low-health literacy and health care providers, says Jeff Burkhart, MS, executive director of the Literacy Network of Dane County, a nonprofit organization in Madison, WI.
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In the treatment chapter of "Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient-and Family-Centered Care: A Roadmap for Hospitals," issued by The Joint Commission, hospitals are told that patient education materials should be written at a 5th grade or lower reading level.
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People who experience depression have more than a 50% increased risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer's disease later in life, according to a study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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What hospital quality manager wouldn't want to have a renowned research center that investigates the leading issues in quality and safety based right within his or her own facility? Certainly not Jan Fitzgerald, MS, RN, CPHQ, director of quality and medical management at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, which also is home of the Center for Quality of Care Research (CQCR).
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HealthGrades, a Golden, CO-based health care ratings organization that provides the public with ratings on more than 750,000 physicians and 5,000 hospitals, has just released a study it claims "evaluates hospital emergency medicine for the first time."
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In light of the growing trend toward public reporting of performance, an increasing number of ED managers are seeking better ways to track their data, says Mark D. Crockett, MD, FACEP, president of the emergency care division at Picis, an information solutions provider based in Wakefield, MA, and an attending ED physician at Morris (IL) Hospital.
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The Joint Commission has suspended its policy that triggers an "automatic" adverse decision if an organization fails to complete an acceptable root-cause analysis in response to a sentinel event or its related measure of success within a specified time frame.
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In 2008, the incidence of pressure ulcers in the ICU at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago ranged from 11% to 13.6%. Today, a multidisciplinary task force has dispelled the myth that little can be done to prevent pressure ulcers in the ICU.
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A group of researchers from the University of Washington, Seattle, led by Denise M. Dudzinski, PhD, MTS, associate professor and director of graduate studies, has concluded that it is preferable to disclose medical mistakes affecting multiple patients even if those patients were not harmed.
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Many ED nurses are apparently not following guidelines for pulmonary function testing and asthma medications, according to a recent study.
