-
Knowing your readmission rate is critical and will become even more important as the health care industry waits for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' decision on how to alter reimbursement based on rehospitalization rates.
-
While measure sets on venous thromboembolism (VTE) and stroke were expected to be part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) recently released proposed 2010 rule for the inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS), the draft did not include those as required measure sets for reporting in 2010.
-
Much like it did with the accreditation standards, The Joint Commission is considering "recategorizing" the core measures into groups, says Jerod M. Loeb, PhD, executive vice president for quality measurement and research.
-
One patient who was attending a preoperative class for joint replacement patients at Geisinger Health System joked that he was being discharged before he ever got to the hospital, recalls Trisha Whispell, BSN, MSW, ACS, social work care manager, who, with her RN care manager partner, presents a pre-admission class on joint replacement and manages care for patients after surgery.
-
The senior emergency center at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, MD, may be a rarity, but based on the responses of patients and staff not to mention our increasingly aging population perhaps more EDs should consider creating a separate unit for older patients.
-
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, "Rehospitalizations among patients in the Medicare fee-for-service program," is getting a lot of press and attention, and was the subject of a webinar presented by The Commonwealth Fund. That organization's vice president, quality improvement and efficiency, Anne-Marie Audet tells Hospital Peer Review why readmission rates should be one of your top priorities.
-
As we move toward myriad changes in the way health care is paid for and move toward a system that becomes increasingly tied in to value-based purchasing, Cheryl Wagonhurst, partner with Folley & Lardner LLP, suggests quality managers look at the big picture and create strategic plans to address quality as a broader, holistic objective.
-
When it seems as though nearly everyone is on Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking sites, you can be assured that many of your employees are online chatting about everything under the sun including what happened at work that day. For health care employees, that can lead to a serious breach of privacy if they pass on protected health information.
-
The popularity of social networking sites can be helpful when it comes to screening new employees and seeing what current employees are saying on the Internet, says Jeffrey M. Pincus, JD, a partner with the law firm of Lewis Johs in Melville, NY. More companies are searching for a job applicant's online presence as a way to investigate his or her background, he says.
-
The best way to deal with the issue of hospital employees snooping in patient records and spreading private information may be with a contract and a specific policy about blogging or social networking, suggest two experts.
