Home care is an important intervention to consider for virtually every patient you discharge to home. By using the strategies discussed above, you can increase your percentage of patients going home with this important service. Remember to assess every patient on admission and to reassess every patient daily.
There are two angles of attack to cutting catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rates by 25%, and the harder approach involves changing provider behavior.
Case managers are a hospital's first line of defense when it comes to smoothing transitions of care and preventing readmissions.
Case managers typically have concentrated on what has to happen before the patient can be discharged from the hospital, but now, to reduce readmissions, hospitals also have to take into consideration what happens to patients after they leave the acute care setting, says Beverly Cunningham, RN, MS, vice president, clinical performance improvement, Medical City Dallas Hospital, and health care consultant and partner in Case Management Concepts LLC.
As part of the ongoing education to prepare for Medicare's Recovery Audit Contractors (RAC) program, Cynthia Lawson, RN-BC, MBA, CPHQ, director of case management at North Hills (TX) Hospital is teaching her case management staff to think innovatively when reviewing charts.
If you haven't started analyzing your hospital's readmission rates and the role case managers can play in reducing readmissions, it's time to start so your hospital can avoid penalties from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
In an effort to ensure that the patients most vulnerable for readmission stay safe at home after discharge, Lutheran Medical Center is developing a pilot program with a local home care agency to provide at least one home care visit for the majority of congestive heart failure patients going home with no services.
By redesigning its case management program and beefing up technology, Saint Thomas Health Services reduced the average length of stay systemwide by 0.20 days and saved more than $6 million in just two years.
In preparation for the Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) and to improve patient flow, Durham Regional Hospital redesigned its case management department and moved to a triad model of patient care.