-
When a health plan, a physician network, and a hospital teamed up to reverse the trend of Medicare hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge, readmissions dropped by 30% or more over an eight-month period when compared to the readmission rate in the same hospital the previous year.
-
When Washington County Health System (now known as Meritus Health) in Hagerstown, MD, first sought to measure the health status of its employees, the results were startling.
-
A week or 10 days before patients have an appointment with a physician at Primary Care of Southbury in Danbury, CT, a nurse or medical assistant calls them to determine if they've been following through on their treatment plan and have everything in place for the appointment.
-
UnitedHealthcare's post-acute transition program has reduced the average length of stay in skilled nursing facilities by three to five days, depending on the market, for members in the program.
-
A true test of the success of a process improvement initiative is whether the results can be sustained, and the ED at Hudson Valley Hospital Center in Cortlandt Manor, NY, has just celebrated the fifth anniversary of its "no wait" process. Most patients skip the waiting room entirely and go right to registration, and then to triage.
-
Childbirth at Evergreen Hospital Medical Center in Kirkland, WA, is viewed as a family experience, rather than a medical event.
-
Recognizing that chronically ill patients benefit from care management beyond the walls of the hospital or their physician's office, Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, CT, has created The Center for Chronic Care Management, which offers four National Committee for Quality Assurance- (NCQA) accredited disease management programs to help patients manage their conditions.
-
By conducing real-time concurrent denials management, Jewish Hospital and St. Mary's Healthcare, a not-for-profit health care system in Louisville, KY, keeps its average denials rate below 1%, consistently exceeding the hospital's goal of a denials rate of under 2% for commercial patient days, including Medicare managed care patients.
-
As reimbursement shrinks and health care providers tighten their belts, hospitals need to take a proactive approach to denials to make sure they get paid appropriately for the care they provide, experts say.
-
If there are any doubts that improving patient flow also enhances patient safety, the recent experience of the ED at Enumclaw (WA) Regional Hospital should dispel them.