-
Even though patient access has a major impact on the hospital financially, the department often is still shortchanged. This is especially true now, with hospitals looking to cut costs anywhere they can, implementing hiring freezes, and asking departments to do more with less.
-
Patient access professionals report being under intense pressure to help the hospital's bottom line.
-
Vicki Lyons, patient access manager at Baptist Hospital East in Louisville, KY, says that she goes to "every extreme" not to have to terminate an employee. That means always taking the time to find out the facts, whether a complaint comes from a patient, family member, or another hospital employee.
-
Sharon Spencer, RN, was working around the house on a Saturday evening when she got word that Columbus (IN) Regional Hospital, where she is employed as a case manager, was being evacuated because of a flash flood.
-
After Summa Health System began a series of initiatives to provide a seamless transition as patients move between levels of care, the rate of hospital readmissions within 31 days dropped from 26% to 24%.
-
When the clinical nurse specialists and case managers at Akron, OH-based Summa Health analyzed the reasons patients were being readmitted within 31 days, they determined that mobility issues, self-care deficits, pain control, and failure of discharge planning were key factors.
-
In its second year, the clinical documentation program at Jupiter (FL) Medical Center was able to increase DRG reimbursement by 75% over the previous year.
-
Telemedicine has long been recognized for improving access to care as well as access to specialist expertise, particularly in rural facilities.
-
Although a recent study at the University of Rochester (NY) seems to indicate that telemedicine could eliminate many pediatric ED visits, a pediatric ED physician with extensive experience with telemedicine believes that its applications are not broad enough to have a significant impact on ED overcrowding.
-
There is a significant amount of research that demonstrates ED crowding due to boarding is responsible for poor outcomes, says Tom Scaletta, MD, president of Emergency Excellence, a Chicago-based organization that improves patient care and efficiency in the ED while controlling costs. He also is medical director of a high-volume community hospital in a Chicago suburb.
