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Budget-conscious quality managers might want to take a good, hard look at the findings in the latest report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project, in Hanover, NH. It indicates that providing chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries more care at a higher cost does not translate into higher quality care.
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A range of factors affects a patient's ability to manage oral medications: cognitive ability, number of medications, and understanding why and how to take medications. To help patients better manage their medications, it is important to identify the reasons they don't and address those in the simplest manner possible.
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Navigating the health care system often is bewildering for people who were born in the United States and speak English; it may be incomprehensible for some of this country's growing immigrant population, who bring their own cultural beliefs and practices with them.
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With the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) emphasizing the reduction of hospital readmissions as one way to cut the overall cost of health care for Medicare patients, home health agency managers have evaluated different ways to improve this outcome for their agencies.
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In the first two years of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's fibromyalgia management program, the inpatient admission rate among members enrolled in the program decreased by 23.3%, emergency department visits dropped by 23.1%, and physician visits went down 16.6%.
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When members are enrolled in Minnesota Senior Health Options from UCare Minnesota, their case manager visits them in their home to meet them and complete an extensive assessment to determine their needs and a plan of care.
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When Jane Cavanaugh, RN, CCM, CPHQ, nurse case manager for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, began managing the care of a Vietnamese woman with lung cancer, she researched beliefs of the Vietnamese culture and tailored her care management plan around them.
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Hospices sometimes find it challenging to meet a community's needs in end of life planning and bereavement services, since these are only a small part of the services a hospice provides.
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Despite widespread conversion to sharps safety devices, hospitals are more likely to be cited for violations of the bloodborne pathogens standard than any other standard.
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The implementation of rapid response teams in seven different facilities in the Seton Healthcare Network in Austin, TX, is a virtual "living laboratory" of the many different ways hospitals can create and implement rapid response teams and they all seem to be working, says Alice Davis, RN, BSN, senior project coordinator, medical staff services.
