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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.
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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.
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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.
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A series of patient testimonies videoed for a new initiative launched by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, MD, this fall shows the benefit of two-way communication between clinicians and patients.
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While a two-hour orientation on patient education provides a good introduction to resources and teaching methods at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, it is difficult to provide all the details in such a short time period, says Brian M. French, RN, BC, manager of The Maxwell & Eleanor Blum Patient and Family Learning Center and The Knight Simulation Program at the hospital.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The National Quality Forum (NQF) added four new items to its list of serious reportable events and updated another 25.
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What happens when you get 122 hospitals to band together and coordinate care for heart attack patients? You save lives, even in small rural hospitals that might not be expected to perform as well as their urban counterparts.
