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The Joint Commission's new 2007 medical staff standards require you to collect performance data for all practitioners. For most practitioners, this will be a simple and straightforward matter, but for others, it could prove to be a daunting challenge.
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When it comes to implementation of rapid response teams, organizations fall into three distinct groups, says Kathy Duncan, RN, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's faculty expert for the rapid response intervention.
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Hospital-based quality professionals have a golden opportunity to step into new leadership roles, due in large part to the growing impact of pay for performance.
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The Joint Commission's 2007 report "Improving America's Hospitals: A Report on Quality and Safety" had some good news hospitals are achieving 90% or better on about half the quality measures tracked since 2002.
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Effective patient discharge is a priority area for all hospitals. Yet many patients who returned home after their hospital stay believe their discharge was inadequate in terms of the information they received and the information sought about their need for assistance at home.
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A Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) first-of-its-kind Medicaid demonstration project that tested integrating health services for beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions has found that such efforts appear particularly promising in generating quality improvements and reducing hospital admissions.
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States and communities wanting to quickly expand health care coverage to the uninsured can profit from experiences in Massachusetts and California, according to a study conducted for the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) that found that expansion of Medicaid and SCHIP through Medicaid health plans is an effective way to cover the uninsured.
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States are making progress in implementing health information technology (HIT) and health information exchange (HIE) initiatives that have the potential to reduce health care costs resulting from inefficiency, medical errors, inappropriate care, and incomplete information, according to a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General (OIG).
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Current health care payment systems create penalties and disincentives across all elements of health care, including preventing illness, diagnosing, treating conditions, and follow-up care.
