Hospital Case Management – November 1, 2012
November 1, 2012
View Archives Issues
-
Inpatient vs. observation: Get it right the first time
Helping your hospital optimize reimbursement and avoid losing money in today's healthcare audit environment starts with ensuring that the patient is in the right level of care from the beginning and this means making sure that observation services are ordered only when they are appropriate. -
Inappropriate admissions mean more paperwork
If patients are admitted to the hospital when outpatient services were appropriate, the level of care can be changed, but there's a lot of paperwork involved to correct the error. -
Hospital initiative reduces heart failure readmissions
By revamping the discharge process and working with post-acute providers, UConn Health Center/John Dempsey Hospital, Farmington, CT, reduced 30-day heart failure readmissions from 25.1% in August 2010 to 17% in March 2012. -
'Strategic triad' initiatives help health system cut LOS
UCLA Health System in Los Angeles reduced length of stay and improved patient throughput by using a "strategic triad" of initiatives that includes interdisciplinary rounds, clinical high-risk meetings, and use of escalation to overcome barriers to discharge. -
Hospital reduces med errors to 0.1 per 1,000
Operating a small hospital doesn' t mean you can' t think big. Ellenville Regional Hospital (ERH), a 25-bed rural hospital in Wawarsing, NY, is enjoying success with a medication reconciliation and patient safety project that would be the envy of any large teaching institution by reducing medication-related events to a very low 0.1 occurrences per 1,000 doses dispensed. -
Got culture change? CUSP tools can transform safety
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has created a website with a wealth of tools to help hospitals set up the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP). (www.ahrq.gov/cusptoolkit) Frontline users that have implemented CUSP say they not only reduced infections, but dramatically transformed their overall patient safety culture.