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Patient access employees at San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare are seeing many more patients with high-deductible plans.
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Patient access staff at NorthBay Healthcare in Fairfield, CA, use a newly implemented patient payment estimator to tell patients what theyll owe before they schedule an elective surgery.
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To collect from patients with high-deductible plans, these tools must be available at the point of service, says Gerilynn Sevenikar, vice president of patient financial services at Sharp HealthCare in San Diego:
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Patient access staff at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, CT, ask these Ebola screening questions at all access points, including pre-registration, call centers, and arrival areas.
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It’s one of those cases where the focus is distinctly on the cup half-full: More than 1,200 hospitals, or just about 37% of those accredited by The Joint Commission, achieved Top Performer status on 2013 accountability measure data. That’s an increase of more than 11% from last year. This is good. But it still means that just about two-thirds of the hospitals The Joint Commission accredits don’t meet that mark.
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If you look at the previous iterations of ECRI Institute’s top 10 tech hazards lists, you will see some items that seem to make the list every year.
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There is nobody who walks the path to the NIST Malcolm Baldrige Quality Excellence award and calls it a sprint. It is something deliberately undertaken with some knowledge that it will be a matter of years before you have any real chance of being one of the organizations named a winner.
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Relying on the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for infection control procedures should be safe, even if the CDC later proves to be wrong, suggests Jane J. McCaffrey, MHSA, CIC, DASHRM, a risk management consultant in Easley, SC, and a past president of American Society for Healthcare Risk Management. However, that statement does not diminish the hospitals obligation to properly train staff on protocols and provide the necessary equipment, she says.
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Insurers are quick to see the needs and the danger in a problem such as Ebola care, and some already are responding with coverage options for potential losses. Some also are looking for ways to avoid paying for those losses.
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One hospitals experience with another deadly infectious disease revealed lessons for how hospitals can respond to Ebola, say two healthcare attorneys who helped that facility through the incident. The key is preparation.
