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A growing number of health insurers is using publicly reported quality data to reward the best-performing hospitals, both publicly and financially.
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Survivors of Hurricane Katrina continued to suffer emotional and mental trauma and limited access to care and medications for months after the storm, largely because of a sharp reduction in charity care and lack of insurance, according to a recent report.
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Discharge planning starts at admission. It's one of the most basic tenets of the discipline, notes Jackie Birmingham, RN, MS, CMAC, but one that is increasingly brushed aside as hospitals focus on utilization review (UR) and bed management in an effort to enhance patient throughput.
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With the advent of hospitalists, credentialing and privileging for medical staff members who no longer care for inpatients is a growing challenge for many organizations.
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Hospitals are making numerous changes in an attempt to improve the quality and safety of patient care services. These interventions could be a new program, practice, or initiatives such as staff training.
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At recent JCAHO surveys at two hospitals in the Wisconsin-based Aurora Healthcare System, all components of medication management were a major focus.
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An infant is born with severe neurological defects following the mother's prolonged labor. Although the mother's labor is not progressing as would be expected, no one on the health care team seems concerned about the lack of progression until the unborn baby shows signs of fetal distress.
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Budget-conscious quality managers might want to take a good, hard look at the findings in the latest report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project, in Hanover, NH.
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At Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center in Findlay, OH, every employee receives bonuses linked to the organization's financial and quality performance.
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At Baltimore-based Harbor Hospital, quality professionals were challenged to get staff to wash their hands 100% of the time. "Hand hygiene is the one action that protects everyone we provide care to, and also protects our own safety," says Patricia Moorhouse-Getz, RN, MSN, the organization's clinical analyst.