-
Infection prevention is a top priority of an ambitious new quality improvement effort that could lead to new accreditation standards for the nation's hospitals, says Mark R. Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, president of The Joint Commission.
-
A hand hygiene project launched at The Joint Commission's Center for Transforming Healthcare cites the following problems and solutions on hand hygiene:
-
The fact that The Joint Commission had to recently issue a Sentinel Event Alert underscoring leadership's critical role in patient safety and quality care is "somewhat sad," notes Ronald B. Goodspeed, MD, MPH, FACP, FACPE, an instructor on health care management in the department of health policy and management, Harvard School of Public Health and former president of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors.
-
Looking at the historically low compliance numbers surrounding hand hygiene, Stephen Weber, MD, Joint Commission consultant and chief health care epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, can only shake his head.
-
Patient access often is the recipient of all kinds of negative feedback - from patients, other departments, and even senior leaders. It's up to you to get the word out about your department's successes.
-
With all the data typically collected by access departments on individual staff members these days, it's easy enough to tell if an employee isn't up to par. But what action should you take, if you see that an individual's accuracy, collections, or patient satisfaction data are poor?
-
Patient access managers worry a lot about how satisfied patients are with their services, but physician offices are another type of "customer" that requires attention.
-
When you think of hospital staff on the "front lines" during a flu epidemic, emergency department and other clinical staff probably come to mind. Don't forget that patient access staff also are in close contact with patients, many of whom have contagious illnesses including H1N1.
-
When she stepped into a new role as a patient access manager at Menasha, WI-based Affinity Health System, Jackie Mitchler says she was amazed at the amount of skills and information that all of her staff had to know and learn.
-
With most hospitals looking more closely than ever at their bottom lines, the last thing that patient access needs is high turnover. Not everyone is cut out for the access department, however. It's a lot easier to hire correctly than to try to work with - or in extreme cases, fire - a person who's not right for the job.
