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When the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology released an opinion on preparing for clinical emergencies last April1, it was part of what one physician thinks is a ramp-up of emphasis on improved patient safety and quality improvement initiatives in the specialty.
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Payers are asking for more preauthorizations, even for services that previously didn't require them, reports Connie Campbell, director of patient access of Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh, WI.
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Despite Sentinel Event Alerts and partnerships between The Joint Commission and professional organizations, wrong-site surgeries continue at a national rate as high as 40 times per week, according to Mark Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, president of The Joint Commission and the Center for Transforming Healthcare.
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The final "Patient Blood Management Performance Measures," formerly named the "Blood Management (BM) Measure Set," have been placed in The Joint Commission Library of Other Measures and are available for all healthcare organizations to use in internal quality improvement initiatives.
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A woman stole paper surgery schedules for about 4,500 patients at an Alabama hospital and used the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers to commit identity fraud, according to a media report.
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Claims denials often occurred at Valley Health System in Ridgewood, NJ, because the patient's disposition didn't match up with what the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) required to authorize a procedure, reports Maura Corvino, MSOL, RN, CEN, assistant vice president for emergency services and patient access.
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The kids are back in school (Thank GOD!), the heat is starting to break, the floods are receding, and the fires are burning out.
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This month's SDS Accreditation Update includes a focus on the perennial and potentially disastrous problem of patient identification errors.
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Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles will have to pay almost $4.7 million to a surgeon who claims the hospital retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on unsafe practices in his department, unless the hospital manages to have the award overturned.
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After a talk I gave last month, someone came up to me after the meeting and asked me this question, "After all the years you have been doing this [surgical consulting], what are some of the things you have learned?"
