A pilot program in which parents or caregivers of patients were screened for health literacy reduced healthcare costs and emergency department use for patients at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, TX.
The Sept. 28 issue of the "Health Care Innovations Exchange," available from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) at http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/issue.aspx?id=113, includes the following.
This month we are adding new features to Patient Education Management (PEM). We want to recognize healthcare professionals who go "above and beyond" to dramatically improve patient education through unique and create approaches. From time to time, we will formally recognize their excellence by bestowing a "Gold Star Award," which will be indicated at the top of their story.
An education program to convert active cancer patients to cancer survivors called "Road to Wellness" has lofty goals, according to its author, Matthew Ballo, MD, professor of radiation oncology at M.D. Anderson Regional Care Center in the Bay Area, Nassau Bay, TX.
The Office of Communications at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research has launched a pilot program to provide Spanish language versions of the agency's Drug Safety Communications (DSCs). The Spanish versions are available at http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm263010.htm.
Knowing how to develop an individualized teaching plan for patients is a skill each newly hired nurse must know at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Therefore, a two-hour orientation gets them up to speed on how to access online resources to support the plan and document the teaching outcomes.
A year after Saint Joseph-London Hospital in London, KY, began a heart failure readmissions program, 30-day readmissions dropped from 27.7% to 15.9%. A similar program for patients admitted for acute myocardial infarctions (AMI) reduced the readmissions rate from 23% to 10% in a short time.
Each year more than one million patients receive cancer treatment in an outpatient oncology clinic. Despite advances in oncology care, infections from community and healthcare settings remain a major cause of hospitalization and death among cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
Planning for a disaster is always important and necessary, and probably even more so when the disaster affects the mentally impaired in a hospital setting.
The question of whether to inform patients of a previous provider's error was highlighted recently in a discussion posted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
