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More hospitals than ever before are being penalized by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for excess readmissions and insurers are starting to develop their own readmission reduction programs.
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The two recently discharged Ebola patients treated at Emory Hospital in Atlanta were the source of much misinformation and fear upon admission, with many people questioning the wisdom of bringing the deadly virus into the country. In response, Susan Mitchell Grant, RN and chief nurse at Emory wrote a thoughtful op-ed piece for the Washington Post.
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Joint replacement surgery may seem routine, but patients are being readmitted to the hospital for a variety of reasons, including comorbidities, poor outcomes from therapy, and deep venous thrombosis.
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Surveillance also tracks other injuries
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Eliminating distractions and standardizing the process for patient handoffs has helped a group of childrens hospitals reduce handoff errors by 69%.
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The Affordable Care Act and other provisions of healthcare reform definitely have shone a bright light on utilization, care coordination, and case management interventions.
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The CMS efficiency measure has once again raised the issues of length of stay management and cost reduction. These have always been a component of the role of the hospital-based case manager. In todays best practice models, these interventions must be correlated with the roles of coordination and facilitation of care, discharge planning and utilization management. The case managers roles and functions, as well as staffing ratios, must be designed in such a way as to allow for this integration of roles. Be sure that your department is focusing on how to embed this important function in your everyday practice!
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As part of its efforts to decrease readmissions, OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL, developed a hospitalwide initiative to create safe transitions.
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The researchers who studied patient handoffs at 23 childrens hospitals found an alarmingly high baseline rate of handoff failure: 25.8% of the handoffs were insufficient or inaccurate.
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Lakewood Hospitals pilot project in which a patient navigator worked with at-risk patients saved the hospital $156,000 in just six months.