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One of the great challenges in the whole world of quality and patient safety is learning to take advantage of the richness of clinical cases, says Robert M. Wachter, MD, professor and associate chairman in the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and chief of the medical service at UCSF Medical Center.
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A team approach and intensive case management of patients has helped San Francisco General Hospital cut the number of hospitalizations and costs for patients who were frequently hospitalized.
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Hospital discharge planners often have to use their ingenuity in finding placements for patients with no insurance who need post-acute services or are homeless and need a place to stay. The problem is that patients must be discharged safely, whether or not they have money to pay for the services they need.
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A pediatric asthma program that includes home visits by an asthma management team and an intensive educational program for families has resulted in a dramatic drop in emergency department (ED) visits for pediatric asthma patients at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, MI.
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The movement to prevent wrong-site or wrong-person surgery got another boost recently when a major health plan announced affective Jan. 1, 2005, it will no longer pay for medical procedures involving those egregious errors. Dont expect to get paid for a procedure if you leave that 12-inch retractor in the patients belly, or the next procedure to remove it.
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Case managers with the Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), a nonprofit medical indemnity association, follow a practice model that differs significantly from that used at most other insurance companies, says Melissa Bojorquez, ACBSW, MBA, CCM, supervisor for the HMSA case management program.
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Hospitals began rationing the flu vaccine as the sudden shortage threw their annual fall campaigns into chaos. The complete loss of half the nations flu vaccine supply highlighted the fragility of a core public health function: vaccinating the population against a potentially deadly disease. By luck, hospitals that ordered from the right manufacturer received their complete vaccine stock, while others had none.
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The Food and Drug Administration has authorized hospitals and other health care entities to redistribute flu vaccine due to the shortage.
