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Working with an initial grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Alameda County (CA) Health Care Services Agency has been working to improve coverage and access to care for a number of targeted populations.
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Efforts to expand health coverage generally express the potential impact in national terms, ignoring that states differ greatly in demographic and economic circumstances and in health insurance markets and thus will experience different impacts from any expansion strategy.
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States looking to save money on Medicaid by adding or increasing premiums and implementing a copay structure may end up creating additional health and financial problems, according to results of an Oregon study.
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Five years ago, the authors of the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report on medical errors said it would be “irresponsible to expect anything less than a 50% reduction in errors over five years.” But Harvard School of Public Health adjunct professor Lucian Leape, a co-author of the report, and Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, have looked at the situation five years later and concluded that, irresponsible or not, we haven’t seen anything approaching a 50% reduction in errors.
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Hospitals may safely upgrade the patient acuity classifications of their emergency department triage systems, but they cannot downgrade them, for fear of violating the requirements of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
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While Providence Health System has used such methods as measuring length of stay and focusing on “discharge by 11” to improve patient throughput, a recent Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) “call around” offered some new food for thought on the subject.
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Providence Health System is pulling out all the stops as it focuses this year and next on improving patient throughput at its three Portland, OR-area hospitals, says Kathy Campbell, black belt project manager for health services integration.
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Under the banner of a comprehensive initiative called “Operational Excellence,” employees at Portland, OR-based Providence Health System are working to help their organization meet its strategic goals, says Nancy Roberts, regional director for integrated performance and Six Sigma champion.
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The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center in Little Rock has been on an upward trend in registration accuracy since 2000, thanks to continuous tweaking of its education program and improved auditing methods by the access department’s revenue integrity specialist team.
