Healthcare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement Archives – February 1, 2009
February 1, 2009
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IHI expands its horizons as it plans 'next step' campaign
Buoyed by the success of the 5 Million Lives Campaign, the Cambridge, MA-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is set to tackle its "next frontier," in the words of Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, president and CEO of IHI. -
AHRQ highlights benefits, challenges of telehealth
By developing secure and private electronic health records for most Americans, and making health information available electronically when and where it is needed, health information technology (IT) can improve the quality of care, even as it makes health care more cost-effective, asserts the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality in a new report. -
Hospital pharmacies meet TJC anticoagulant rules
Hospital pharmacists will need to continue their focus on anticoagulation therapy and improving safety, as indicated by a sentinel event alert by The Joint Commission on anticoagulant use. -
CM protocol results in decreased denials
Payer denials for inappropriate observation patient status dropped by 50% the first year after Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton, OH, instituted a case management protocol that delegates responsibility for determining patient status to case managers. -
Education was key to success of CM protocol
Before developing a protocol that delegates authority for determining patient status to case managers, a multidisciplinary team at Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton, OH, spent several months researching the process, seeking advice from the Florida Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) and hospitals in Florida that had piloted a case management admission status protocol. -
Multifaceted approach keeps patients flowing
The emergency department at Middle Tennessee Medical Center (MTMC) in Murfreesboro certainly qualifies as busy: It sees nearly 63,000 patients a year and averages more than 170 patients a day. -
Don't wait for CMS move, EDs are told
With the likelihood that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will adopt some or all of the 10 national voluntary consensus standards for hospital-based ED care recently endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF), experts advise ED managers to begin preparing now to be in compliance.