Hospital
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IDWeek 2016: Connections Drive Infections, as Bugs Move with Pts
Pathogens and patients move together across an interconnected healthcare continuum, meaning no matter how high a level of infection prevention is achieved in one hospital it is still at the mercy of a wide variety of transferring facilities, said Tom Frieden, MD, director of the CDC.
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CORRECTION
From last month's issue. -
Readmission Rates for Bariatric Surgery Drop with QI
Thirty-day readmission rates for bariatric surgery patients can be reduced by implementing a series of quality improvement efforts, according to recent research. Some of the top performers in the study more than doubled the average readmission reduction.
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Physicians Unlikely to Reveal Errors to Patients, Study Says
Primary care physicians are willing to report medical errors within the healthcare organization, but are not as likely to tell the patients, according to a recent study from the School of Public Health at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
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C. Difficile Reduced 75% with Targeted Interventions
A hospital in Medford, OR, reduced its rates of C. difficile infections by three-fourths with a targeted approach intended to identify exactly what strategy is the most effective after previous attempts left hospital leaders wondering which of several interventions had worked.
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Look for Variations in Data, Seek Out Causes
Studying a range of data sets at your hospital may reveal opportunities to improve outcomes and cut costs, says Nancy Lakier, RN, BSN, MBA, CEO and managing principal of Novia Strategies, a consulting company based in Poway, CA. The outliers and unusual numbers will point you toward issues that need more investigation, she says.
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Reduce Clinical Variation to Improve Quality, Resource Use
Clinical variation is the bane of many healthcare leaders, including quality leaders who realize it’s not acceptable to have better processes and outcomes in some areas but not in others. Standardizing clinical resources and processes can significantly improve quality while also reducing costs and resource use.
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Geriatric-Friendly EDs Improve Quality, Outcomes and Satisfaction
Hospitals are finding that EDs designated specifically for geriatric patients can improve quality of care and patient satisfaction for an aging population, but it also is possible to make existing EDs more geriatric-friendly and reap the same benefits.
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People with Mental Illness Often Excluded from Clinical Trials
If a medication for major depression has a dangerous adverse interaction with a different medication that’s being studied in a clinical trial, will it be discovered by researchers and reported in the literature? Not likely, if no one enrolled in the study has major depression.
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IRB Designs Process to Separate QI from HSR
The most commonly asked question of the Intermountain Healthcare IRB in Salt Lake City has been: “Is this quality improvement or is it research?”