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Emergency physicians and pre-hospital personnel are trained to intervene rapidly in critical situations. In the absence of information to the contrary, a patient's desire to be resuscitated must be assumedespecially when withholding life-sustaining procedures may result in death.
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Accurate documentation always has been important but it can have an even bigger impact on reimbursement with the new MS-DRG system, according to Deborah Hale, CSS, president of Administrative Consultant Services Inc., a health care consulting firm based in Shawnee, OK.
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Adapting to the sweeping changes in reimbursement mandated by the new MS-DRG system may be like suddenly having to drive on the left-hand side of the road, says Bert Amison, managing director for health care advisory services at KPMG.
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Faced with patients waiting for a bed for hours in the emergency department and an increase in time on ED diversion, Southern Ocean County Hospital in Manahawkin, NJ, began a hospital-wide initiative to improve throughput.
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Despite fears that issuing the new Important Message from Medicare regulations would result in a spate of patients appealing their discharge, hospital case managers report that appeals have not increased and that the requirement for issuing the notice within 48 hours of discharge actually helps staff focus on the discharge plan.
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The adoption of the new MS-DRG system, coupled with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) move to cost-based relative weights is likely to have a significant financial impact on hospitals, says Deborah Hale, CSS, president of Administrative Consultant Services Inc., a health care consulting firm based in Shawnee, OK.
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A team approach to quality measures has resulted in a significant drop in ventilator-associated pneumonia for patients in the intensive care unit at Columbus Regional Hospital (IN) and helped the hospital earn the 2007 American Hospital Association-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize.
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It's common for case managers to say, "Oh, I wish I were a consultant." Yet, case managers already have jobs in which they do much of what a consultant does.
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A "near-miss" in which a nurse at a Pennsylvania hospital incorrectly placed a "do not resuscitate" (DNR) wristband on a patient has prompted an Ohio initiative aimed at implementing statewide standardization of colored wristbands.
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