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If you want to effectively help patients and family members with end-of-life issues, you need to examine your own feelings about death and dying, says Catherine M. Mullahy, RN, BS, CRRN, CCM.
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Despite an increasing number of visits to the emergency department, Nyack (NY) Hospital has been able to meet its standard of 30-minute service 95% of the time and decreased its discharge length of stay in the ED by 35%.
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In today's health care environment, case managers are under more pressure than ever to discharge patients from acute care; but before you send patients home with home health care, home medical equipment, or hospice services, make sure that they are appropriate for those services, advises Elizabeth Hogue, Esq., a Washington-DC based attorney specializing in health care issues.
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If your hospital is like most, patients admitted through the emergency department are being held, possibly in hallways, for hours and even days.
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The largest health plans appear to be in the process of adopting guidelines from the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) for machine-readable insurance cards, according to Peter Barry, of Peter T. Barry Co., a Milwaukee-based consulting firm specializing in health care and information systems. Barry is chair of WEDI's initiative on health identification cards.
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After Concord (NH) Hospital's multidisciplinary cardiac care team began holding daily collaborative rounds with patients and family members on the cardiac patient care unit, length of stay decreased and patient satisfaction scores rose.
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A comprehensive system to ensure that patients with pneumonia receive recommended care resulted in a significant increase in quality measure scores at Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC.
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Patient access staff will have to get used to a change for Medicare patients, with the new Advance Beneficiary Notice of Noncoverage (ABN) form now used for all situations where Medicare payment is expected to be denied. The form, implemented by the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS), becomes mandatory
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While a rapid response is important in trying to save lives and prevent in-hospital deaths from cardiac arrest, the vehicle for that response is now called into question.
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The intervention is membership in a group collaborative. The five measures relate to antimicrobial prophylaxis in surgical patients. The endpoint: Did being part of the collaborative help facilities comply with the measures? The conclusion: No.
