Quality & Patient Safety
To meet the changing needs of our communities, hospitals are working hard to make sure that every individual receives the highest quality of care. To achieve that goal as our nation becomes increasingly diverse, we must redouble our efforts to identify and eliminate disparities in care.
Hospitals are making greater use of new technologies to improve emergency department throughput. Digital registration kiosks and bedside registration systems streamline the process, allowing patients to be treated more quickly. Electronic patient tracking boards can reduce wait times and improve…
Half of the nation’s primary care physicians say the increased use of quality-of-care metrics to assess provider performance is having a negative impact on patient care, according to a survey report from The Commonwealth Fund and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Twenty-two percent see quality metrics…
Mortality and hospitalization rates and inpatient spending for Medicare patients 65 and older declined between 1999 and 2013. A Journal of the American Medical Association study found that the annual death rate from all causes declined to 4.5 percent from 5.3 percent, and the…
Snapshot A crucial part of population health is keeping patients healthy outside the hospital. But certain patients, due to their surroundings or their illnesses, often bounce back to the emergency department or to an inpatient stay after discharge. To get a handle on their most…
The overuse of antibiotics in both medicine and livestock has been making headlines recently, and patients and community members may be turning to you with questions. The American Hospital Association, in fact, is already addressing the public health and national security threat…
Cases involving mental disorders and their associated expenditures increased more than those of heart disease, cancer or any of the other top five costliest conditions, according to an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report. The number of patients treated for mental disorders…
Board diversity has lagged behind the growth of increasingly diverse communities. This article looks at the advantage of having a diverse board and how to begin having discussions around building one and doing the work to create a diverse board.
Florida's Lee Memorial Health System is using several strategies to connect emergency department patients with mental health and/or substance abuse problems to the outpatient care they need.
Snapshot
Years of deep cuts to mental health care services have left ill-equipped hospital emergency departments struggling to care for untreated patients. Three organizations confronted the problem head-on by integrating behavioral health into primary and specialty care, screening and supporting…