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After Summa Health System and Akron, OH, area nursing facilities formed the Care Coordination Network to improve communication throughout the continuum of care, lengths of stay and readmissions for patients transferred to facilities in the network dropped.
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A pilot project providing coaching and follow up for heart failure (HF) patients who are readmitted frequently resulted in a 50% drop in the readmission rate at Indiana University (IU) Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, IN.
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The recruitment and retention of good case managers has never been more important than it is today. In the early years of hospital case management, many case managers transitioned into the role from utilization review or discharge planning positions.
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Where will we find the new case managers and what will the new candidate look like? They might not be the seasoned clinician as you would hope for. As we need more and more case managers and social workers, some of us might need to look even more broadly for our candidates.
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At Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA, a long-term acute care liaison evaluates patients with complex needs for potential placement in a long-term acute care hospital (LTACH), coordinates a comprehensive plan for transition with the treatment team, and works with the accepting facility and the patients' insurers to ensure a smooth transition.
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Effective communication is critical to the successful delivery of healthcare services. The Joint Commission supports a number of efforts to improve communication between healthcare professionals and patients.
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A patient should be educated with several topics when diagnosed with asthma, says Marc Riedl, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Division of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. They include the following:
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At the University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC) in Seattle, educators ask inpatients how they prefer to learn and document that information on the electronic medical record, when there is no protocol for accommodating the patients' preferences. These actions are futile, members of the Patient and Family Education Committee complain.
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Children's Medical Center in Dallas found families were making repeated visits to the emergency department seeking treatment for a child with an asthma attack. These children were being admitted to the hospital repeatedly. To address the problem, the Asthma Management Program was initiated in 2001.
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The Library of Non-Traditional Patient Education Tools is an ongoing project hosted by Patient and Family Education Services at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. It is an ongoing tracking system of educational tools to teach patients of various learning styles such as hearing, seeing, and hands-on.