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As part of its efforts to increase transparency in health care and to help consumers make informed decisions about which hospital to choose, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) expanded the information on the Hospital Compare website, adding 10 new outpatient measures and updated information on 30-day mortality and readmission rates for heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and pneumonia.
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In just a few years, your hospital could lose a significant amount of money if its 30-day readmission rate is higher for Medicare patients with certain diagnoses than the rate at other hospitals.
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When a hospital in downtown Knoxville, TN, closed and volume soared at other nearby hospitals, two hospitals in the Covenant Health System joined forces to develop a systematic approach to capacity management that allows each hospital to create variances in the process to meet its individual needs.
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Your ED patient's bad outcome might have nothing to do with the fact that he or she was held in the hallway while awaiting an inpatient bed. However, it could impact the outcome of subsequent litigation against the ED.
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A study of a patient safety strategy at Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital that incorporated bar-code verification technology within an electronic medication-administration system (bar-code eMAR) showed a significant reduction in errors, according to an article published in the May 6, 2010, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Mistakes happen even to the best clinicians. This is why hospitals increasingly are relying on checklists and other tools to assist clinicians in the discharge process.
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Hospitalized patients with terminal illnesses often feel abandoned by their physicians at the end of their lives. Their physicians might experience a lack of closure that is unsettling.
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In quality improvement circles, certain states have gained a reputation for excellence, and recent statistics out of Pennsylvania seem to indicate that this particular state's reputation is well deserved. A new report issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) shows a decline of 12.5% for overall health care-associated infection (HAI) rates at the state's acute care hospitals in 2009.