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So how do you evaluate the quality of your contracted services? Frank Ruelas, MBA, principal of www.hipaabootcamp.com and director of compliance and risk management at Maryvale Hospital in Phoenix, has some tips.
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Checklists have become a ubiquitous term for the patient safety movement, which most recognize as being born with the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report "To Err is Human."
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Press Ganey Associates Inc., the South Bend, IN-based patient satisfaction and quality firm, reports that "patient satisfaction leaped" after the launch of public reporting.
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If you're getting tired of bad news these days, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has some positive news. As it nears the end of its 5 Million Lives Campaign this month, it celebrates this year's successes, and according to IHI Vice President Joe McCannon, those have been plentiful.
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Citing improved efficiency and consistency, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has begun transitioning the handling of hospital claim reviews from quality improvement organizations (QIOs) to fiscal intermediaries (FIs) and Medicare administrative contractors (MACs).
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On Oct. 30, 2008, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the final 2009 rule for the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS).
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In preparation for its unannounced survey with DNV Healthcare, Citizens Medical Center personnel readied their survey preparation box. Last minute documents were pulled when surveyors arrived for the unannounced survey a patient census, the surgery schedule, a list of patients in restraints.
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For the sake of her study, Rachel Werner, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania school of medicine and researcher with the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, defined safety-net hospitals predominately by the rate of Medicaid patients seen by the facility. But she acknowledges that the term encompasses much more in general, those hospitals that treat primarily uninsured, vulnerable patient populations.
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As final guidance is hammered out on the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005, interim guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the criteria for becoming a patient safety organization (PSO) has allowed the The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to officially designate PSOs.
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There's good news and bad news in a new study just released by the Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, and the Boston University Health Policy Institute: Of 470 hospital chief quality officers surveyed, 97% reported that QI activities had a positive effect on patient care outcomes.
