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A dedicated billing analyst for your emergency department (ED) can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars that goes straight to the bottom line instead of just flying out the window, say two managers who have added about $300,000 a year.
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ED volume increasing, most hospitals report.
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Before Virtua Health instituted a Six Sigma project to improve its congestive heart failure program, the hospital systems average length of stay (LOS) was 6.5 days, compared with the Medicare benchmark of 4.2 days. After a pilot project at one of the Marlton, NJ-based nonprofit health care providers four hospitals, the LOS dropped to four days with a savings of $116,000 per year in staff and room costs.
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For case managers working in an acute-care environment, advocacy is a fundamental principle of the services they provide. Advocacy may be described simply as wanting, getting, and doing what is in the best interest of the patient and the family. In practice, however, case managers find themselves acting as advocates not only for the patient and family but for the hospital and provider of care as well.
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A new preadmission program at the University of California (UC) Davis Health System is building a stronger link between hospital and physicians office and identifying issues much earlier in the process issues that might affect length of stay (LOS).
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In recent years, efforts to address substance abuse among pregnant women have moved from being barely visible public health initiatives to controversial political battlegrounds.
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Paramedics in the Denver area will be administering an experimental blood substitute to patients who meet certain criteria under an unusual research protocol that allows patients to be recruited without giving informed consent.
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An experimental blood oxygenation device has the potential to help thousands of patients with severe emphysema or other lung conditions. The device has been thoroughly tested in laboratory animals, but human trials would involve major invasive procedures for research participants and place them at very high risk of death or serious complications.
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When Christiana Hospital in Newark, DE, first instituted its hospitalist program in 1994, the hospital experienced a big drop in length of stay, especially with the uninsured patients who had no particular physician watching over them, recalls Thomas Mannis, MD, senior medical advisor for case management and head of the division of hospitalists.
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At Medical City Dallas Hospital, there is a healthy competition between two hospitalist groups who compare their outcomes with those of the other group and all the physicians in the hospital, says Beverly Cunningham, MS, RN, director of case management.
