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Be Serious About Promoting Successes

Quality improvement professionals put a great deal of work in improving quality of care and patient safety, with projects both grand in scale and small but significant. But once an organization achieves success, how do leaders make sure the right people know about it?

Keeping It Together: Hospital Consolidation

Whether for financial reasons, to improve integration of care, decrease duplication of clinical services, or to mitigate the financial effect of COVID-19, more hospitals are choosing to consolidate into larger systems. What can hospital case managers do to prepare for this, and how can they handle the transition with grace?

Hospital Cuts COPD Readmission Rates with Bundle Checklist

The development of a bundle checklist for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has helped a Maryland hospital sharply reduce its readmission rates for these patients. Overall care quality improved for these patients while admitted.

Best Practices for Documenting Allergies

A good quality improvement project for 2021 would be to focus on bolstering the way the organization handles patients’ allergy histories.

AAAHC’s Allergy Benchmarking Study Highlights Inconsistencies

In a recent study, investigators found allergies sometimes were not verified or updated at each visit, there was a reliance on using the acronym NKDA (no known drug allergies), without references to other allergies or sensitivities, and overall allergic reaction documentation was inconsistent.

Court Orders New Trial Over Hospital’s Improper Closing Arguments

The appellate court’s decision focused on whether the non-party status of the nurse who allegedly dropped plaintiff was determinative in the case at hand. The court of appeals found the trial court failed to exercise its full range of discretion and had not carefully considered the fact that although the nurse was not a party to the case, her conduct was the object of the case, and it was unclear whether the jury fully understood that she was not a party to the matter.

Hospital to Stand Trial for Botched Brain Surgery Performed with Recalled Laser

As often is the case in medical malpractice cases, defendants made a concerted effort to dismiss the case based on the insufficiency of the plaintiff’s expert report. Here, however, the court of appeals began its analysis by specifying that based on the applicable standard of review, the purpose of the plaintiffs’ expert report is to demonstrate the plaintiff is not filing a frivolous lawsuit.

New and Proposed HIPAA Rules May Offer More Protection

New legislation and proposed rules will affect HIPAA compliance. Both actions are good news for covered entities and business associates.

Nurse in Jeopardy for Refusing Hospital’s COVID-19 Policy on Scrubs

A Minnesota nurse refused to follow his hospital’s policy on taking scrubs home and laundering them, rather than using hospital-provided scrubs. The hospital fired the nurse, who is alleging whistleblower retaliation. Nurses at the hospital resisted the policy because they did not want to take COVID-19 home to their families.

Understanding Emergency Use Authorization Issues with COVID-19 Vaccine

Current COVID-19 vaccines have not undergone the process for full FDA approval, but have been authorized under a streamlined process known as an emergency use authorization. Because of this, the vaccines are technically considered experimental and are subject to regulations that may affect whether employers are permitted to mandate their use by employees.