Articles Tagged With: hospitals
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Amid Protests from Hospitals, CMS Releases Overall Star Ratings
CMS has launched its new overall quality star ratings for Medicare hospitals, which is raising the ire of hospitals and medical associations that have pushed the agency to block, or at least revise, the rating system.
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Assess Anesthesia Patient Satisfaction Correctly
Measuring patient satisfaction is important in all aspects of healthcare, but anesthesia can pose a particular challenge. There is a lack of standardized tools and anesthesia does not fall easily into the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems categories.
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CMS Issues Temporary Halt to Short Stay Reviews
Faced with concerns from providers and apparently inconsistent education being provided by the Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organizations, CMS temporarily suspended reviews of short hospital stays and ordered the QIOs to re-review every denial issued since they took over the reviews.
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Vicarious Liability Becoming More of a Threat
With all the legal risks that hospitals face, it used to be that risk managers could be confident, at least, that vicarious liability was a pretty weak threat. In most cases, hospitals were not held liable if the physician was independent and no hospital employees were involved.
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EMTALA Still a Risk, But Some Are Letting Down Their Guard
The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed an award of punitive damages that was 386 times the hospital’s share of compensatory damages for a violation.
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Special report on EMTALA next month
Hospitals have been under scrutiny recently for violations of EMTALA, with one hospital agreeing to pay $100,000 for an improper transfer.
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DOJ Sues Two Hospital Systems For Allocating Marketing Territories
The Department of Justice announced recently that it is suing Charleston (WV) Area Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center in Huntington, WV, for unlawfully agreeing to allocate territories for the marketing of healthcare services, a move that DOJ says deprived consumers of the benefits of access to important information about competing healthcare providers.
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Can Yelp Reviews Enhance Reports on Hospital Quality?
Yelp reviews of hospitals cover topics not found in the federal government’s survey of patients’ hospital experiences, according to the results of a study from Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
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Study Shows Safety Culture Affects Hospital Quality
Hospitals usually focus on technical issues like surgeons’ skills and operating room equipment when seeking to improve surgery outcomes and overall quality. New research, however, is reinforcing the idea that a patient safety culture may be equally important in delivering high-quality patient care.
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Hospital Culture Must Be Measured, Not Just Improved
Hospitals strive to have the right culture, particularly when it comes to patient safety, but measuring improvement can be challenging. It’s not enough to strive for a health culture, says one expert. You also have to know if you’re getting any closer to your goal.