Tag Archives: Quality of Care

‘America’s Other Drug Problem’: Copious Prescriptions For Hospitalized Elderly

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http://khn.org/news/americas-other-drug-problem-copious-prescriptions-for-hospitalized-elderly/?utm_campaign=KHN%3A+Daily+Health+Policy+Report&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=33586061&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–bdRi0dTgQHu8uQ2ZulMR4yf3sqzJr1Sth8fzdGhdBCCWQUjWv6mmzHR3SYxmWe2x3oTFceHM_ETsw6MSh6jG6n9qT_Q&_hsmi=33586061

Harriet Diamond at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, on Thursday, May 5, 2016. (Heidi de Marco/KHN)

An increasing number of elderly patients nationwide are on multiple medications to treat chronic diseases, raising their chances of dangerous drug interactions and serious side effects. Often the drugs are prescribed by different specialists who don’t communicate with each other. If those patients are hospitalized, doctors making the rounds add to the list — and some of the drugs they prescribe may be unnecessary or unsuitable.

“This is America’s other drug problem — polypharmacy,” said Dr. Maristela Garcia, director of the inpatient geriatric unit at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. “And the problem is huge.”

Eleven ways MACRA will impact your business

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http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/managed-healthcare-executive/news/eleven-ways-macra-will-impact-your-business?GUID=A13E56ED-9529-4BD1-98E9-318F5373C18F&rememberme=1&ts=24082016

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, known as MACRA, is one of the most significant payment changes since Medicare’s inception in 1965.

“Physicians and other clinicians payments will be at risk, beginning with a plus or minus swing of 4% in 2019, that increases to plus or minus 9% by 2023,” says Chester A. Speed, JD, LLM, vice president, public policy, AMGA.

To be successful under MACRA, providers will have to consider the clinical, financial and cultural changes they need to make to do well under risk, according to Speed.

“And while providers can rightfully say they’ve seen this before in the 1990s, risk, or value-based payments are now written into law and they are here to stay,” he says.

What impact will MACRA have on your organization? We asked experts to tell us.

The Life-Changing Magic of Choosing the Right Hospital

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There’s an exceedingly simple way to get better health care: Choose a better hospital. A recent study shows that many patients have already done so, driving up the market shares of higher-quality hospitals.

A great deal of the decrease in deaths from heart attacks over the past two decades can be attributed to specific medical technologies like stents and drugs that break open arterial blood clots. But a study by health economists at Harvard, M.I.T., Columbia and the University of Chicago showed that heart attack survival gains from patients selecting better hospitals were significant, about half as large as those from breakthrough technologies.

That’s a big improvement for nothing more than driving a bit farther to a higher-quality hospital.

 

FL Health System on Path to Save Millions by Standardizing Surgical Practice

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http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/leadership/fl-health-system-path-save-millions-standardizing-surgical-practice?spMailingID=9394331&spUserID=MTMyMzQyMDQxMTkyS0&spJobID=981810720&spReportId=OTgxODEwNzIwS0

Ongoing discussions with large employers including Disney have led Florida Hospital to examine granular surgical data in an attempt to wring out unnecessary costs.

This Nurse Leader Cut LOS by 40% in the Emergency Department

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http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/nurse-leaders/nurse-leader-cut-los-40-emergency-department-0?spMailingID=9348186&spUserID=MTMyMzQyMDQxMTkyS0&spJobID=980998666&spReportId=OTgwOTk4NjY2S0#

Around 2012, Ajimol Lukose, DNP, RN-BC, nursing director at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, noticed a trend—more patients with behavioral health issues were seeking treatment in the emergency department. This development came on the heels of the state cutting $113.7 million in general funds from its mental health budget, and Chicago closing of six of its 12 city-run mental health clinics.

“There was a reduction in mental health clinics, so the follow-up or outpatient programs were limited. That resulted in patients showing up in the emergency department,” Lukose told me.

On any given day, there could be as many as six or seven behavioral health patients in the ED.

“Our emergency department was struggling with patients with mental health issues staying there for three and four days and waiting for state transfer, especially unfunded patients,” she said.

At the same time, Lukose needed to implement a project for the doctorate of nursing practice degree she was working toward. She has a background in psychiatric nursing and thought she could help address some of the issues around caring for this patient population by developing a safe care delivery model to improve care quality and reduce length of stay in the ED.

Her results were even better than expected.

New MRI technology could be placed outside shielded zones

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New MRI technology could be placed outside shielded zones

MRI Scanner Illustration

Life sciences and diagnostic equipment maker Aspect Imaging, a division of Singapore-based Aspect International, and design and strategy firm frog, have collaborated to produce a new category of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines.

The Embrace Neonatal MRI System preps and scans newborn babies in under one hour within a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Unlike most MRIs, the system doesn’t require other medical equipment, cooling systems or a dedicated, shielded MRI facility.

Frog Creative Director James Luther said the design firm employed human-centered design process to perform field-work in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) throughout the United States and Europe. The goal was to understand “the context, roles, work flow and pain points” in NICUs, eliciting the advice of NICU physicians and nurses and replicating a NICU that included incubators and mock silicone newborns.

IBM’s Watson cracks medical mystery with life-saving diagnosis for patient who baffled doctors

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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ibms-watson-cracks-medical-mystery-life-saving-diagnosis-patient-who-baffled-doctors-1574963

IBM WatsonIBM Watson

Are computers coming for your job? IBM’s Watson, a super computer powered with artificial intelligence, will have the medical profession looking over their shoulders after correctly diagnosing a patient within minutes – something doctors failed to do after months.

A female patient suffering from leukaemia had been baffling medical professionals from Japan after treatment and all previous treatment being prescribed for the condition was proving ineffective. It was a mystery for doctors. The team with no other ideas on what to do decided to call in IBM’s Watson for help and it proved to be a life-saving move.

The mighty machine spent just ten minutes studying the patient’s medical information and was able to cross-reference her condition against 20 million oncological records, which had been uploaded to its system by doctors from the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Medical Science.

It discovered the patient actually had a varying form of leukaemia than first diagnosed and told doctors it required different treatment.According to a report by Silicon Angle the new treatment proved far more effective than original methods.

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/it/ibm-minutes-solves-patient-care-stumped-doctors-for-months

Understand the Culture: 8 Questions to Ask Potential Employers

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http://johngself.com/self-perspective/2016/08/understand-culture-8-questions-ask-potential-employers/?utm_source=Self+Perspective+from+JohnGSelf+%2B+Partners%2C+Inc.&utm_campaign=85ba12fca3-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_70effc545f-85ba12fca3-88600789

Here is today’s rundown for the SelfPerpsective Podcast.

John is working on a new CEO search which led him to focus on the importance of understanding a potential employer’s corporate culture.  

On Wednesday, John’s blog, After All These Years:  It Is Still the Culture, discussed how candidates said they were rarely, if ever, provided any information on a suitor’s corporate culture.  This is amazing since poor culture fit is one of the most common reasons that candidates recruited from outside an organization are forced out in less than two years.

Today John, who has a reputation for accurately reading a company’s culture after only a short period of time, provides some sample questions for candidates.

Share your experiences and contribute to the conversation.

Thanks for listening.

The SelfPerspective Podcast Team

 

Caring for High-Need, High-Cost Patients—An Urgent Priority

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http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/in-brief/2016/jul/caring-high-need-high-cost-patients-urgent-priority?omnicid=EALERT1072635&mid=henrykotula@yahoo.com

Meaningful improvement in the health system will require improvement in care for those patients using it the most: people with multiple chronic conditions. Within this clinically diverse group are patients who remain stable for years with appropriate treatment, others who live with extreme functional limitations, and still others with persistent behavioral health challenges or related social needs, like housing or food, that exacerbate their conditions. Care for these high-need, high-cost patients is expensive: despite comprising just 5 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 50 percent of the nation’s annual health care spending.

Is the CQO Position Needed?

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http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/quality/cqo-position-needed?spMailingID=9208161&spUserID=MTMyMzQyMDQxMTkyS0&spJobID=961199903&spReportId=OTYxMTk5OTAzS0

“In a healthcare system’s most mature state, everyone owns quality,” says Baylor Scott & White Health’s chief quality officer. So if everyone owns quality, why have a CQO?

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/what-makes-an-ideal-chief-quality-officer.html