Hospital
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Stop Surprise Bills With One Pre-reg Call
Patient access departments are moving financial discussions earlier in the process with preregistration phone calls.
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Did Payer Coverage Change? Communicate to Patient Access Quickly
Updating patient access employees on payer coverage changes is a top challenge for patient access leaders.
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Don’t Make Patients Come to You: Find Them
Some patient access departments are tracking patients’ locations in registration areas to provide better service, with plastic tracking badges, wristbands, or the patient’s own smart phone.
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Prior Authorizations: ‘Top Issue Within the Revenue Cycle’
A growing number of states have passed prior authorization legislation to combat payer requirements resulting in delayed care, lost revenue, and dissatisfied patients.
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Virulent, Drug-resistant Pneumonia Bug Emerges in China ICU
In particularly unwelcome news from China, researchers report they have isolated a strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae that is both hypervirulent and highly drug-resistant. A worse combination is difficult to imagine. Usually, hypervirulent K. pneumoniae remains susceptible to drugs, but acquiring resistance apparently through genetic transfer in nature means this is a bug that could possibly infect heathy people in the community, let alone frail hospital patients.
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Poor Oral Care During Hospitalization May Lead to Pneumonia
Ventilator-associated pneumonia is a commonly tracked healthcare-associated infection, and frequently the target of interventions to protect patients. On the other hand, non-ventilator healthcare-associated pneumonia falls into a gray area, where it often remains unreported in surveillance systems.
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CMS, Joint Commission Are Citing for ‘Flash’ Sterilization
The abiding principle is that if you must rapidly sterilize an instrument — usually in an effort to return it to the sterile field — you must immediately use it.
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SSIs: A Common and Costly Infection
The CDC has issued new guidelines for the prevention of the most common and costly healthcare-associated infection: surgical site infections.
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Highly Drug-resistant C. auris Continues to Emerge in U.S.
The CDC is urging infection preventionists and their clinical colleagues to have a high index of suspicion for emerging Candida auris, a fungus that spreads more like bacteria, can be highly drug-resistant, and survives on skin and environmental surfaces for prolonged periods.
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Secondary Heart Failure Affects Readmissions
Heart failure that develops or worsens during a hospital stay can affect outcomes, costs, and readmissions, so hospitals are advised to identify patients at risk for secondary heart failure.