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A new emergency department (ED) triage system at Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, FL, decreased the time that elapses between when patients arrive and when they are treated by 33%, slashed the number of patients who left without treatment by 50%, and cut 20 minutes off the total turnaround time from when patients arrive at the ED and when they are discharged or admitted.
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Frank Zibrat, associate director, ORYX implementation at The Joint Commission, says one of the areas hospitals are still struggling with regarding the core measures is the surgical care improvement project (SCIP) measures. Specifically, "the issue of the discontinuation of antibiotics and the selection of antibiotics."
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As reported earlier this year in Hospital Peer Review, The Joint Commission is taking a look at National Patient Safety Goal #8, medication reconciliation, with which hospitals are struggling. Now, it is taking a look at three other challenging goals; but unlike with medication reconciliation, the others still will impact accreditation decisions.
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In April, The Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) put out an updated measures specifications manual that introduced two new core measures.
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As we move toward myriad changes in the way health care is paid for and move toward a system that becomes increasingly tied in to value-based purchasing, Cheryl Wagonhurst, partner with Folley & Lardner LLP, suggests quality managers look at the big picture and create strategic plans to address quality as a broader, holistic objective.
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A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, "Rehospitalizations among patients in the Medicare fee-for-service program," is getting a lot of press and attention, and was the subject of a webinar presented by The Commonwealth Fund. That organization's vice president, quality improvement and efficiency, Anne-Marie Audet tells Hospital Peer Review why readmission rates should be one of your top priorities.
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The senior emergency center at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, MD, may be a rarity, but based on the responses of patients and staff not to mention our increasingly aging population perhaps more EDs should consider creating a separate unit for older patients.
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One patient who was attending a preoperative class for joint replacement patients at Geisinger Health System joked that he was being discharged before he ever got to the hospital, recalls Trisha Whispell, BSN, MSW, ACS, social work care manager, who, with her RN care manager partner, presents a pre-admission class on joint replacement and manages care for patients after surgery.
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Much like it did with the accreditation standards, The Joint Commission is considering "recategorizing" the core measures into groups, says Jerod M. Loeb, PhD, executive vice president for quality measurement and research.
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While measure sets on venous thromboembolism (VTE) and stroke were expected to be part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) recently released proposed 2010 rule for the inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS), the draft did not include those as required measure sets for reporting in 2010.
