-
A hospital in Greenville, SC, will pay nearly $9.5 million to resolve Medicare billing improprieties from 1997 through 1999 in its home health, hospice, and durable medical equipment programs, the Office of Inspector General announced recently.
-
-
-
Directors of supply management for home health agencies face a different set of challenges than do supply management directors for hospitals, but the rewards of an effective system to control supply costs can be significant, say experts interviewed by Hospital Home Health.
-
At present, the right of patients to choose providers who will render them home care is based upon three key sources. Despite these requirements there is a lingering perception that hospitals give lip service to patients right to freedom of choice.
-
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) in New York City has launched a Palliative Care Leadership Center (PCLC) initiative to help health care organizations create programs to more effectively manage advanced chronic illness.
-
After the results of the Recombinant Human Activated Protein C Worldwide Evaluation in Severe Sepsis (PROWESS) trial were published in 2001, many institutions established criteria for use of drotrecogin alfa (activated) that were similar to the inclusion criteria used in the trial. Institutions, however, then had to decide how to evaluate the criteria and the outcomes of patients with sepsis. At one institution, a broad, systematic approach to that evaluation was taken.
-
Pharmacists now can expect thousands of drugs and biological products to have bar codes on their labels by 2006.
-
The federal government announced several new initiatives recently regarding prescription drugs, as well as the final report from the Counterfeit Drug Task Force.
-
A number of studies have questioned the dogma of oral contrast administration. Only one, however, was prospective: Staffords study published in 1999 cast doubt on whether oral contrast added any significant data to the evaluation of stable patients. Now, a prospective, non-randomized, cohort study from Salt Lake City with 500 consecutive Trauma I (their highest designation) patients has omitted oral contrast from the routine trauma abdominal CT scan.
