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The Joint Commission (TJC)

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  • Asthma triggers in hospitals lead to ER visits, employee absenteeism

    There's a hazard in hospitals that hits every hot button for employee health. It causes occupational illness and even fatalities, raises the costs of medical claims, and increases absenteeism. Because it's in the air we breathe, it could affect significant numbers of employees and could even harm vulnerable patients.
  • The good shepherd: Small facility gets big results

    It's not always easy to attract nurses to a small, rural hospital. But they're more likely to stay at a hospital that has a safe work environment.
  • $17.7M settlement after officer left quadriplegic

    The University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center has reached a $17.7 million settlement with a former Stone Park, IL, police officer who suffered a brain injury due to medical negligence, according to the officer's law firm
  • Doctors flee Illinois due to malpractice policy

    Half of all graduating medical residents or fellows trained in Illinois leave the state to practice medicine elsewhere, in large part due to the medical liability environment in Illinois, according to a new study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The study warns Illinois will face a critical physician shortage especially in rural areas if new strategies aren't adopted to stem the exodus.
  • 'Miracle on the Hudson' offers safety lessons

    In 2009, Jose Gonzalez, MD, the medical director for the Texas Medicaid/State Children's Health Insurance Program, discovered the devastating results of a medical error in a very personal way. When his niece, Kaelyn Sosa, then 18 months old, was brought into a Miami hospital after receiving a bump on her head from a fall, she was sedated and given an MRI. During the test, her breathing tube became dislodged, resulting in a severe brain injury.
  • Guidelines stress whistleblower protection

    New 2010 Amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank Act") make clear that prosecutors and regulators expect to see an effective compliance program that protects whistleblowers, including risk managers, says Reid Bowman, JD, general counsel with ELT Inc., a San Francisco company that provides compliance and ethics training.
  • Set self-pay patients up on a payment plan

    Here is a payment plan matrix for self-pay patients used by patient access staff at Skaggs Regional Medical Center in Branson, MO.
  • Set self-pay patients up on a payment plan

    Here is a payment planÿ
  • Accuracy may be key to revenue increases

    If registrars are more accurate when completing registrations, fewer claims denials will result. This clearly improves your hospital's fiscal situation, but remains a daunting challenge for many patient access departments. Here are some steps taken by the patient access department at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, NY:
  • Triple POS collections using this approach

    Carmen Arroyo, clinic operations manager of cardiology, nephrology, and pulmonary medicine at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, set a goal to increase her area's time-of-service collections by 9% over the previous fiscal year. She wound up tripling the amount collected. Here is how she did it: