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A new study from the Dartmouth Atlas Project seems to indicate the "report card" for Medicare patients at the end of their lives is a mixed bag of pluses and minuses.
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But this is how we've always done it." Whenever you hear this phrase, take a close look at the process to which it refers. The staff at Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia did and the close look resulted in a process change that resulted in a $400,000 savings over an 8-month period.
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Researchers say there need to be more clinical trials examining the safety and effectiveness of pain medications used with children, which are too often administered based on information from adult trials.
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The goal of hospice care is to help terminally ill beneficiaries continue life with minimal disruption and to support beneficiaries' families and caregivers throughout the entire process.
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For patients with severe heart failure, an implanted mechanical pump known as a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) can be a life-sustaining treatment.
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When the money is flowing you don't always look closely at what you spend," admits Mary Haynor, president and chief executive officer of Horizon Home Care & Hospice in Brown Deer, WI, an agency that cut $1.3 million out of the annual budget in early 2010. "It is hard, time-consuming work to evaluate all of your costs but when you do, you see how the little things add up," she admits.
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A $1.3 million cut in an annual budget is no easy feat, but management at Horizon Home Care & Hospice in Brown Deer, WI, was able to make the cut without affecting quality or requiring across the board staff layoffs.
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The benefits of cardiac rehabilitation following myocardial infarction (MI) are well known. However, whether these benefits are also seen in ambulant community-based patients who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is not known.
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Most (83%) patients/surrogates stated they preferred full code status but only 4% could identify the components of CPR; 16% stated preferences that differed with the medical record.
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Standard therapy for bacterial meningitis in children is probably overkill but it is risky to cut back in resource-rich countries.