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A lawsuit involving a terrible outcome, but good emergency department (ED) care, seemed "very defensible" to Matthew Rice, MD, JD, FACEP, former senior vice president and chief medical officer at Northwest Emergency Physicians of TEAMHealth in Federal Way, WA. Rice was about to recommend that the hospital vigorously defend the case, but it never got to that point.
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Quality outcome metrics, compiled for the entire organization, include readmissions, discharge/disposition delays, delays in service/turnaround time, patient satisfaction, and inappropriate admissions.
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Amid the successes in sharps safety in hospitals in the 21st century, there is one glaring gap: the operating room. Sharps injuries there remain as much of a problem as they were in 2000, when the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act was signed into law.
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A recent federal report that included the highly publicized finding that some 15,000 Medicare patients die every month due to adverse events and hospital-acquired conditions (HAC) may ratchet up pressure on hospitals to prevent infections, which represented some 15% of the HACs.
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Spectrum Health, based in Grand Rapids, MI, has introduced a successful patient safety program called "Condition Concern" that its proponents say offers a unique approach to patient and family involvement in expressing concerns they have about care. The program was described in a recent article in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality.
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Thirteen rural hospitals in the state of New Hampshire decided several years ago to pool the funding of each hospital's Small Rural Hospital Improvement Grant Program (SHIP) funds to create a network for a QI initiative called the New Hampshire Critical Access Hospital, Quality Improvement Network (QIN).
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The first year after Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta implemented a Heart Failure Resource Center that provides care coordination for patients discharged with heart failure, the 30-day rehospitalization rate for heart failure patients in the program decreased from 4.6% to 1.6% when compared to heart failure patients treated at Piedmont and not in the program.
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WellPoint's initiatives to reduce hospital readmissions by following up with Medicare Advantage members after discharge has decreased the readmission rate and reduced skilled nursing days, according to Karen Amstutz, MD, vice president and medical director of care management for seniors and state sponsored business for the Indianapolis-headquartered health benefits company.