Healthcare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement Archives – August 1, 2004
August 1, 2004
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What pay for performance can mean for quality managers
Make no mistake about it. Hospital CEOs are paying greater attention these days to the growing number of report cards and other publicly available comparable data that show where their facilities stand vis-à-vis the competition. -
Take proactive steps with pay for performance
With a growing number of private insurers and agencies such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) heavily involved in pay-for-performance arrangements, quality managers should become proactive about exploring and understanding this growing trend, says one pay-for-performance expert. -
HealthGrades opening up methodology to review
Lakewood, CO-based HealthGrades, whose web site is a leading consumer destination for nationwide quality ratings of hospitals, physicians, and nursing homes, has opened for review its methodology for comparing the nations hospitals in terms of quality. HealthGrades claims 1 million consumers log on to its site each month. -
Researchers unveil tool to predict cardiac death risk
An international group of researchers has created a risk-predicting tool that enables clinicians to calculate the chances that a particular patient will die within six months of going home from the hospital after a heart attack or unstable angina episode. Their work was detailed in an article in the June 9, 2004, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. -
Evidence-based design could help quality of care
You may not be an architect, but it might be time for you to start paying a little more attention to the way your hospital is designed especially if youre about to have a new facility built or youre embarking on a substantial renovation. -
Children in hospitals often have adverse events
According to new research from the Rockville, MD-based Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), children in hospitals often experience adverse patient safety events (i.e., medical injuries or errors) in the course of their care, with those in vulnerable populations, including children younger than 1 year, at highest risk. -
New surgery standards could save 8,000 lives
If all hospitals met the quality standards for five high-risk surgeries set by the Washington, DC-based Leapfrog Group, it would save nearly 8,000 lives each year, according to a new study from the University of Michigan (UM) Health System in Ann Arbor.