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A program at the University of Michigan Health System in which physicians and nurse practitioners visit patients after their transfer to a skilled nursing facility has smoothed transitions and reduced the average length of stay of older patients from 10.6 days to eight days.
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Beginning Oct. 1, 2012, more than 2,000 hospitals serving Medicare patients began losing reimbursement under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) readmission reduction program, which penalizes hospitals experiencing excess 30-day readmissions for heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and pneumonia. The average penalty is about $125,000.
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Bassett Medical Centers readmission reduction project has resulted in a reduction of up to 70% among highest-risk patients.
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Safe patient handling should be standard practice, not best practice. That is the message behind new, draft standards issued by the American Nurses Association (ANA).
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Hospitals may eventually receive some relief from the burdens of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Recovery Auditor (RA) program (previously called the Recovery Audit Contractor [RAC]) program but dont think the RAs are going away.
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Hospitals that appeal their denials by the recovery auditors (RAs) recoup their money 75% of the time, according to data provided by the American Hospital Association. But, only 40% of denials are appealed.
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The multidisciplinary team on each unit at Springfield Regional Medical Center in Springfield, OH, holds short team huddles at a specific time every day and reviews each patient, the plan of care and goals, and what needs to happen each day.
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After Springfield Regional Medical Center in Springfield, OH, began daily multidisciplinary team huddles to facilitate patient care, the hospitals performance on targeted core measures rose to the 95th quartile compared to a range of 75% to 81% when the project began, and the housewide ratio of the observed-to-expected length of stay decreased from 1.15 to 1.07.
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The American Hospital Association reports that 88% of all hospitals responding to its RACTrac Web-based survey have received an audit under the Recovery Auditor (RA) program.
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The focus on patient flow in the hospital setting began in the 1990s, when emergency department (ED) overcrowding became a serious threat to patient safety and quality of care.