-
"What [Goal 7] is doing is... reminding us that more Americans are dying of these infections than breast cancer, motor vehicle incidents, and HIV infection combined in this country," says Stephen Weber, MD, associate professor in the section of infectious diseases and chief health care epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center and consultant with Joint Commission Resources.
-
It might feel like you're speaking a different language when you try to get physicians on board for your quality initiatives. And you actually are, according to one lawyer and health care consultant well versed on the topic.
-
-
As part of its journey to prevent health care-associated infections, Florida Hospital's clinical excellence team asked staff what risks they saw. The answers they got were sometimes unexpected, but they helped the team understand the organization's culture and determine which fundamentals should be saved and which should be altered.
-
When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it would publicly report hospitals' readmission and mortality rates for heart failure, heart attack, and pneumonia, Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) was front and center.
-
By assigning an anticipated date of discharge to every patient within 24 hours of admission, the clinical resources management staff at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, FL, have been able to shave three hours off the hospital's average discharge time, freeing up beds and dramatically decreasing the amount of time patients wait for a bed in the emergency department.
-
A mentoring program for staff members who have already completed orientation is seen as a key strategy in the programs of Carolinas Medical Center (CMC) in Charlotte, NC, which recently was named the winner of the 2009 Franklin Award of Distinction by The Joint Commission and the American Case Management Association.
-
With a vaccine shortage projected for novel H1N1 influenza A, only the highest priority groups are likely to be offered the shot when initial lots are cleared for distribution this fall.
-
In today's health care environment, hospitals are challenged on all fronts. The Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) are carefully scrutinizing hospital records, looking for inappropriate admissions, incorrect level of care, and inaccurate coding in the charts of Medicare patients.
-
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has granted hospitals a temporary reprieve from a reduction in Medicare payments.
