In this age of evidence-based practice and cost containment in health care, effective discharge planning is increasingly important. But how is effective discharge planning defined and measured?
Successful discharge planning is a much more complex process than simply moving patients safely out the door, so it follows that evaluating your discharge planning process also might be a complex proposition.
Preparing to discharge a frail, elderly patient is a task that shouldn't be taken lightly in any setting, but for Priscilla F. Cutler, MSW, LICSW, MFA, ensuring that an elderly patient's safety net is in place can prove challenging in a mountainous, lightly populated area of New Hampshire.
Medicare providers by now should have begun using the revised advance beneficiary notice (ABN) of coverage to let participants know when Medicare is unlikely to cover their care.
The Joint Commission in 2006 initiated a new standard that demands "accurate and complete reconciliation of medications across the continuum of care," but nurses and case managers at Mercy Health Center in Oklahoma City were way ahead of them. Long troubled by discrepancies in patients' in-hospital and at-home medications, they already had a solution in the works.
Sometimes the bright light of unwanted attention can spur improvement, and that's the theory behind the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) decision to publish the names of underperforming nursing homes.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a free brochure outlining the five levels of the Medicare Part A and Part B appeals process. The overview describes the process and provides details on where to get more information about Medicare appeals.
Clinicians are becoming more attuned to the many complications of influenza, particularly with the high morbidity and mortality seen with H5N1 strains spreading around the world.
