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URAC in Washington, DC, recently released a set of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Accreditation standards for public comment. When completed later this year, the new program is intended to help health care organizations display a commitment to fair information practices, and to demonstrate that they have taken the necessary steps to protect health information privacy.
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Obtaining prescription drugs for patients who cant afford them has been a problem for Athens (GA) Regional Medical Center for the 18 years that Beverly A. Baker, CRC, CCM, has been with the hospital, she says. The situation changed dramatically for the better about a year and a half ago.
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With the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recent emphasis on investigating nosocomial infections as sentinel events, now is the time to start planning how you will coordinate a root-cause analysis with your organizations infection control professionals.
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Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently announced the adoption of final security standards for protecting individually identifiable health information when it is maintained or transmitted electronically.
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Service quality is a high priority for most health care organizations. Unfortunately, failures in service and, therefore, concerns are inevitable due to the number of variables and perceptions involved in health care delivery. Feedback and learning from concerns is a key ingredient for achieving service excellence.
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A social work professional at a 100-bed hospital in Indiana is getting free medications for patients who cant afford them with a program she says could be a model for health care organizations across the country.
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W.A. Foote Memorial Hospital in Jackson, MI, has dramatically increased the bang for its prescription drug buck by forming a medication assistance program (MAP) in conjunction with several community agencies.
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An influential congressman is calling for a broad investigation of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), alleging that the accrediting body is ineffective, torn by conflicts of interest, and rife with financial improprieties.
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Several important changes were announced to Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health-care Organizations surveyors at a recent training session in Chicago, including new definitions for some types of sentinel events.
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Quality improvement projects can be especially challenging if you try to implement them on a systemwide basis across many health care institutions, but a diabetes project in Iowa shows that it can be done if you give people the tools and let individual organizations decide how best to use them.
