Healthcare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement Archives – July 1, 2009
July 1, 2009
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Hospitals advised to play it safe when it comes to H1N1
Just when you thought it was "out," it pulls you back in the H1N1 virus, that is. After dramatic headlines and dire warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early days of this global outbreak, hospitals and infection control specialists swung into action. Facilities such as Clarian Health in Indianapolis temporarily restricted non-essential patient visitors at its downtown hospitals. -
Will your staff come to work?
One of the greatest challenges during a pandemic may be ensuring that you have adequate staffing, warns Katherine West, BSN, MSED, CIC, infection control consultant at Infection Control/Emerging Concepts in Manassas, VA. -
NQF endorses practices for safe lab medicine
The National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed a set of practices to improve the safety and quality of laboratory services. -
Hospital discharge process can be more efficient
While hospital discharge planners make certain each patient's discharge and transition in care are handled with quality of care and safety in mind, it's the job of hospital operations chiefs to make certain the entire process runs smoothly and efficiently. -
Scale measures quality of hospital discharge process
Researchers have developed various tools to give discharge planners and physicians objective ways to determine whether patients are ready to be discharged from the hospital to home. -
TJC makes it clear: Get surgical smoke out of OR
The air is clearing in the nation's operating rooms, as The Joint Commission (TJC) places a greater emphasis on evacuating smoke from electrocautery procedures. -
Team meetings spur quick results
Generating projected revenue increases of $20 million to $24 million is impressive enough, but accomplishing the task in less than a year is really remarkable. -
ED/hospitalist plan improves throughput
A new plan for admitting patients from the emergency department (ED) at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore jointly developed by an ED physician and a hospitalist, decreased ED throughput for admitted patients 98 minutes (from 458 minutes to 360 minutes) from the same period a year earlier, despite an 8.8% increase in the ED census. -
Specialists are skeptical at first
It was a challenge to convince administration officials to invest about half a million dollars a year for 2.4 additional hospitalist FTEs required for a new plan for admitting patients from the ED at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore. However, it was just as hard to convince some specialists to cede the responsibility for admitting patients to their units to a hospitalist, as the new plan required.