Articles Tagged With: CMS
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President’s Group on Patient Safety Publishes Recommendations
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology recently released its findings and recommendations on patient safety in a report that outlines how “patient safety is an urgent national public health issue.”
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Ensuring Compliance in Case Management Is Critical
Many compliance issues in the CMS Conditions of Participation for utilization review and discharge planning need attention. Ensuring compliance is critical for improving patient care, preventing financial penalties or sanctions, and avoiding trouble with governmental authorities by identifying and correcting compliance issues early.
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CMS Auditing Electronic Visit Verification Systems
The Office of Inspector General announced it will audit electronic visit verification systems for personal care services and home healthcare services, creating an obligation to ensure compliance.
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Case Managers Could Use Z Codes More for Patient Care and QI
Case managers, providers, and health systems underuse ICD-10 Z codes eight years after they were introduced. These codes could provide a wealth of data to researchers and case management quality improvement projects. They still hold promise to be a way for providers to collect reimbursement for their work to help patients with their social determinants of health.
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Stroke Patient Navigator Prevents 30-Day Readmissions
A stroke nurse navigator team can prevent 30-day readmissions in stroke patients treated with thrombolysis, investigators found. A health system’s 30-day readmission rate was 13.6% before it began to use a stroke nurse navigator. The rate declined to 6.9%. Patients with the stroke nurse implementation were 67.6% less likely to be readmitted within 30 days compared to patients without the navigator.
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National Patient Safety Board Could Be Implemented
A bill in Congress could create a patient safety board modeled after the successful safety efforts in transportation. The bill would create a National Patient Safety Board that would do for the healthcare industry what the National Transportation Safety Board and Commercial Aviation Safety Team have done to improve safety for those fields for more than 25 years.
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Violence Continues to Threaten Hospital Workers and Patients
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities struggle daily with the threat of violence from patients and visitors, requiring more effort to identify potentially violent people and take steps to prevent injury.
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CMS Ends COVID Shot Mandate for HCWs
On Nov. 4, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services began requiring healthcare workers to receive at least the initial series of COVID-19 vaccine. After considerable hue and cry — marked by lawsuits and resignations — the requirement was officially rescinded on June 5, 2023.
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APIC Supports Ending CMS Vaccine Mandate
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology supported the end of mandated COVID-19 vaccines for healthcare workers and suggested adding two key hospital infection risks as quality indicators.
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CMS to Test Innovative Primary Care Model
The focus is on better management of chronic health conditions by streamlining access to integrated services.