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Within 45 days after daily multidisciplinary patient care conferences were instituted at North Fulton Regional Hospital, the hospital's average length of stay dropped by more than a day and excess days decreased by more than 300 days within the first quarter of implementation.
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At Sutter Health's Sacramento (CA) Sierra Region, case manager supervisors at each hospital conduct a secondary, retrospective review of 100% of one-day stays of Medicare patients to ensure that the individual case managers are making the right determination and using any deficits they uncover as an educational opportunity.
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Sutter Health's Sacramento Sierra Region's customized electronic case management system with embedded InterQual criteria enables the case management department to track everything from individual case manager performance to regional outcomes.
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Now that hospitals' 30-day readmission rates for heart failure, heart attack, and pneumonia are being posted on the Hospital Compare web site, the stage is set for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to start reducing or eliminating payments for patients who are readmitted to the hospital.
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In an effort to clarify what had been confusing in the past, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) changed the wording of the observation orders and admission status, effective July 1.
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When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) analyzed hospital readmission rates to post them on the Hospital Compare web site, the lowest heart failure readmission rate in the nation was at the Baylor Jack and Jane Hamilton Heart and Vascular Hospital.
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If hospitals are going to avoid penalties for 30-day readmissions, they need to start now to identify their own patterns of what caused the readmissions and use that information to improve the discharge plan, suggests Jackie Birmingham, RN, MS, CMAC, vice president of professional services for Curaspan Health Group, a Newton, MA, health care technology and services firm.
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Hospitals still need to be vigilant about issuing the Important Message from Medicare (IM), notifying Medicare patients of their right to appeal their discharge, their financial responsibilities, and how to appeal their discharge, warns Jackie Birmingham, RN, MS, CMAC.
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A new emergency department (ED) triage system at Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, FL, decreased the time that elapses between when patients arrive and when they are treated by 33%, slashed the number of patients who left without treatment by 50%, and cut 20 minutes off the total turnaround time from when patients arrive at the ED and when they are discharged or admitted.
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When an elderly woman continued to have elevated blood pressure after her physician prescribed a medication regimen, the doctor assumed the patient was confused and not taking her medication properly.
