Articles
Quality & Patient Safety
How to Create Exceptional Patient Experiences Without Exception
By Lola Butcher
• Patient experience is growing in importance as a performance measure for hospitals, especially as patients become more savvy health care consumers.
• Medicare holds back part of its reimbursement, and doesn’t pay it back until the end of a payment period, based partly on HCAHPS scores.
• Hospital leaders are using a variety of tactics to measure and improve patient experience scores.
• Training caregivers on how to improve patient experience is critical.
Delivery System Transformation, Financial Oversight, Governance Effectiveness, Operational Excellence, Care Delivery, Quality & Patient Safety, Strategic Planning, Leveraging Technology, Issues & Trends
Investing in Innovation to Disrupt Health Cares Status Quo
By Lola Butcher
Trustee Talking Points
Trustee Talking Points
- Many health systems are operating venture funds or other formal mechanisms for developing and commercializing innovations.
- Their motivations for developing innovations are to improve their own operations and create new revenue streams.
- Startup companies want to partner with health systems so they can pilot their technologies in the real-world environment.
Governance Effectiveness, Care Delivery, Quality & Patient Safety
Eliminating Patient Harm
By Lola Butcher
SNAPSHOT
Hospitals that strive for high reliability aim to drive out the possibility of error and reject incremental improvements.
In 2006, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center became the first pediatric hospital to receive the American Hospital Association–McKesson Quest for Quality Prize. Its board of trustees took the honor to be a challenge.
Governance Effectiveness, Quality & Patient Safety
The High-Reliability Journey Starts with Transparency
By Lola Butcher
The first step on the high-reliability journey is a commitment to transparency within the organization and with patients and family members.
Consumerism, Financial Oversight, Governance Effectiveness, Leadership, Strategic Planning, Issues & Trends
Consumerism Hits Health Care
By Lola Butcher
Snapshot
Faced with growing financial responsibility for their health care, individuals are behaving more like consumers when making care decisions. They want more information, more convenience and better service than many hospitals currently provide. Forward-thinking health systems already are working to become more consumer-savvy.
Financial Oversight, Quality & Patient Safety
Setting the Standard for Discharges
By Lola Butcher
Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, Md., has done something every hospital in America wants to do.
“We decreased readmissions [from skilled nursing facilities] by 24 percent across the entire county,” says Andrea Horton, director of care management for the community hospital. “Percentage-wise, we dropped our readmission rate from almost 21 percent to 16 percent, which we have sustained.”
In doing so, the hospital saved $1.52 million in a year.
Care Delivery, Quality & Patient Safety
Why Nursing Home Quality Matters to Hospitals
By Lola Butcher
Snapshot
With reimbursement at risk from readmissions, hospitals are eager to collaborate with nursing homes to smooth the discharge process and provide staff training. For their part, nursing homes are standardizing protocols and developing long-term care plans to win hospitals’ referrals.