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Start Every Week by Announcing Priorities; End Week With Celebration
Never-ending changes for processes, requirements, and regulations mean a top challenge for revenue cycle leaders is how to disseminate all this information to staff. A facility in New Orleans has found success with two methods.
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Ask Patients for Input Before Revamping Registration
Before revenue cycle leadership proceeded with its detailed front-end modernization project at a Chicago hospital, they had to run it by some very important people — the hospital’s family advisory board. While it was time to take a fresh look at registration, admissions, and check-in, the group had to ensure that registration processes were not holding up patient care.
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TJC Surveyors Interested in Revenue Cycle Staff Capabilities
Anyone would expect TJC surveyors to ask how staff protect patient safety, not just in clinical areas but in the entire organization. But what about revenue cycle jobs and determining if someone is qualified to work in that department?
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Competencies, Training, and Fire Safety: All Fair Game During Joint Commission Surveys
Employees in clinical areas are aware that surveyors from The Joint Commission could arrive at the hospital at any time unannounced. The same is not always true for registration areas. But since registration and admission staff are the first employees patients meet, that means these employees also are the first ones surveyors will approach.
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Creating a Standard of Care for Identifying, Managing Patients With Uncontrolled BP
Given the high prevalence of undiagnosed hypertension, investigators are looking at how emergency providers can play a role in identifying and intervening with patients who present to the ED with high blood pressure readings. The idea is to catch the condition at an earlier stage so that patients do not end up returning to the ED with strokes, heart attacks, and other serious cardiovascular consequences from uncontrolled hypertension.
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Innovative Staffing Model Reduces Handoffs, Boosts Provider Satisfaction
To address the patient safety risks associated with provider handoffs, Seattle Children’s Hospital designed a new staffing model that is built around waterfall-style shifts, in which a new attending physician arrives every three to five hours. The approach has significantly reduced the number of handoffs that occur without increasing attending physician hours. Further, it has won the approval of both providers and charge nurses.
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Frontline Providers Look for Answers Regarding Return of Acute Flaccid Myelitis
Confirmed cases of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) in 2018 reached 90 by the end of October, according to the CDC. While the CDC has yet to confirm what is causing AFM, experts strongly suspect that the disease stems from common viral infections. Still, it is not yet clear why just a small number of patients go on to experience paralysis in one or more limbs, a characteristic disease feature.
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Coordination Center Uses Real-time Data to Speed Collaborative Decision-making
As high-volume hospitals face continual overcrowding and ED boarding problems, leaders are recognizing that change is needed. To resolve logjams, some institutions are turning to a centralized command center model that relies on a nurse navigator to be the ED point person.
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Some States Provide Funding When SDOH Used to Improve Quality
One health system is finding that the state it operates in is willing to support the use of social determinants of health to address health issues affecting the community.
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Efforts Underway to Reduce Medicare Spending, Meet Standards for Spending Per Beneficiary
With the healthcare industry’s increased focus on value-based purchasing, debate continues as to whether hospitals are meeting standards for total Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary.