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It is possible that the increased preventative care provided by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could even reduce the number of patients seeking emergent or late-term medical care, thereby reducing medical malpractice claims, but that situation is far from certain, says James Ron Kennedy, MHA, ARM, AIC, vice president for risk management and patient safety at Louisiana Medical Mutual Insurance Co. (LAMMICO) in Metairie.
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IT security is becoming more important in healthcare every day, but the old ways of educating employees and physicians on this topic are insufficient, say leading IT security experts. Risk managers should consider entirely revamping the way IT security is taught and monitored, they say.
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News: In 2007, a woman in labor was given oxytocin to help speed up her delivery and increase the frequency and intensity of her contractions.
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Many adverse events in hospitals are never reported to state adverse event reporting systems, according to a recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG).
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News: On Nov. 26, 2006, a 49-year-old man from Howard Beach, NY, underwent a heart transplant at a New York City hospital. Less than a week later, on Dec. 2, 2006, the patients new heart suffered a massive hemorrhage.
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When Valley Baptist Medical Center in Brownsville, TX, began a project to reduce readmissions in the fall of 2009, the overall 30-day readmissions rate was 23.3%.
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Case managers are more likely to develop a discharge plan that works if they look beyond the reason for hospitalization and take into consideration everything that has been going on in the patient's life, says Jackie Birmingham, RN, MSN, MS, vice president emeritus, clinical leadership at Curaspan Health Group, a Newton, MA, healthcare consulting firm.
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When an analysis of readmissions indicated that a significant number of patients being readmitted within 30 days had been discharged to a post-acute provider, TMF Health Quality Institute, the Texas Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) established regular meetings with hospitals in the community, including Valley Baptist Medical Center in Brownsville, TX, and downstream providers including skilled nursing facilities, long-term acute care facilities, home health agencies, dialysis units, hospice providers, and rehab hospitals in the Brownsville area.
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When providers bring the family caregiver into the discharge process early, there is a better chance that the caregiver will be prepared to care for the patient at home, says Carol Levine, director of the Families and Health Care Project for the United Hospital Fund, a non-profit health services research organization based in New York City.
