Care Delivery
Reducing readmissions is an important way to improve quality and lower health care spending, and hospitals are making significant progress. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported that the national readmission rate (i.e., instances when patients return to the same or different…
Boards have a keen interest in quality, and they are helping their hospitals and systems to implement a variety of improvement strategies. One particularly effective tactic is building successful partnerships with patients and families by including patient and family advisers. A new guide from the…
Workers are leaving the long-term care field faster than those entering it across all LTC sectors, which could create problems down the road when home care and long-term care volumes are expected to soar, according to a report from the UCSF Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care.
One of the first — and sometimes only — place patients experience a hospital is the emergency department, where many first and lasting impressions are made. It’s known as the hospital's front door, but the ED is also the front line of care, concierge desk and the gateway through…
Between 2005 and 2010, disparities in care between white and black patients fell for 13 of the 17 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services inpatient process measures. Disparities between white and Hispanic patients fell for 14 of the measures, according to a report published in the Dec. 14,…
Hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) treat sicker and poorer patients than do physician offices, according to a new study. Prepared for the American Hospital Association, the study aimed to determine whether there were differences in patient demographics or care between HOPDs and physician…
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.
Hospitals and other health care facilities create and maintain thousands of policy documents. A typical hospital has policies that guide daily operations, ranging from administration and human resources to direct care and use of medication. An infection control policy, for example, guides…
A primary care department is a unit or clinic within a hospital that provides such primary care services as general pediatric care, general internal medicine, family practice and gynecology through hospital-salaried physician and nursing staff. It focuses on evaluating and diagnosing medical…
More than half of health executives expect to recoup their investments in population health management within four years, according to a survey report from KPMG. Other respondents weren’t quite as optimistic: 29 percent expect their investments in health information technology and data and…