Hospital Peer Review
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CMS quality measures report finds improvement
The annual National Impact Assessment of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Measures Report shows a largely positive picture of the healthcare industry and its uptake of quality measures. It’s not surprising: Every report that has come out has shown good, sometimes great results for various metrics. Some have more direct impact on patients than others.
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Study relates slowing cost boost to quality site
While there is debate about whether publicly reporting quality data has an impact on how the public purchases healthcare or even on patient outcomes — despite showing improving metrics — there is now evidence that it is having an impact on the cost of at least two procedures.
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Breaking bad habits, forming good ones
It is been a dozen years since Rekha Murthy, MD, FRCP(C), FACP, FIDSA, FSHEA, medical director for the epidemiology department at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, really started working hard to make good hand hygiene a habit for everyone at the hospital. In the intervening years, the hospital has gone from having hand-washing rates in the 70s to consistently over 95%.
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Why are your surgical patients coming back?
A study out in the February 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that patients who are readmitted to the hospital after surgery are almost always coming back due to post-discharge complications rather than something that happened during their care in the hospital.
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10 tech issues to consider, according to ECRI
When the Ebola outbreak hit the news last summer, the experts at ECRI Institute, a Pennsylvania-based patient safety organization and recently re-designated Evidence Based Practice Center, were already thinking about how to protect patients from infection.
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It is time to start walking the talk of transparency, experts say
The first reports of hospitals talking to patients about mistakes brought gasps and headshakes through the healthcare world.
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Further Reading on Diagnostic Errors
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Just how wrong are you?
No one would argue that physicians and other providers always get it right. But there can be a variety of reasons for getting a patient diagnosis wrong.
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Hospital Compare may slow price increases
While previous studies have failed to prove that access to quality information from public reporting sites such as Hospital Compare can be an impetus for hospitals to improve quality of care, a study published in the January issue of Health Affairs indicates it may have an impact on prices.1
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Behavioral health and hospital costs
When you think about it, it’s not the fact that’s surprising, but the extent. In 13 New Jersey hospitals, a third of all hospital costs were associated with behavioral health issues, such as substance abuse or mental illness. Even more alarming, the report by the Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy noted that three-fourths of the highest users of hospital services were afflicted with behavioral health conditions, compared to about a third of those who were not considered high users of services.