-
Infection control professionals have the expertise to handle a rapidly expanding job definition, but must have the resources and staff to accomplish the new demands on the profession, a leading ICP recently said in Chicago at a conference held by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
-
New infection control standards by the Joint Commission describe a widely supported and collaborative program that represents one of a hospitals top priorities. Highlights of the 2005 standards, which are effective next Jan. 1, include this statement in the overview:
-
Amid increasing sensational press exposés and consumer advocates demanding release of hospital infection rates, comes this cold truth from a leading public health official: Health care-associated infections are fraught with so many variables that epidemiologists dont really know how many occur and how many can be prevented.
-
In a move that stunned infection control professionals, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently announced that it will require one of the most contentious provisions of its failed tuberculosis standard annual respirator fit-testing under its existing general respiratory protection standard.
-
Concerned about the emerging threat of pandemic influenza in Vietnam, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has dispatched a team to Hanoi to investigate an H5N1 avian flu outbreak that had claimed 12 lives as of Jan. 15, 2003.
-
On Jan. 13, 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a new suspect case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in a 35-year-old man living in Guangdong province, China.
-
In 1999, Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas had a denial rate of 1.12% of gross revenue at year end. The denial rate began to decline steadily following the implementation of a denials management team and process improvement teams, both of which include members of the case management staff. The process has saved millions of dollars. For fiscal year 2003, the denial rate has dropped to 0.2% of gross revenue.
-
When it comes to improving quality, sometimes the simplest and least expensive measures work best, reports Earl Kurashige, RN, project manager for Qualis Health, a nonprofit health care quality improvement organization based in Seattle.
-
Descriptions of the following positons: Payer specialists, Placement specialist, Denials management specialist, Staff assistants and Department secretary.
-
In this first part of a two-part series on benchmarking, we tell about two hospitals that achieved dramatic reductions in length of stay (LOS). Next month, we discuss how to speed up admissions by addressing virtual capacity issues with the entire hospital.