Quality and Safety
The medical specialty societies participating in ABIM Foundation's Choosing Wisely have grown in number and have identified 90 more commonly-used tests and treatments that are not always necessary and may even cause harm, the foundation announced today.
For the last 10 years, the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers (CCHP), in Camden, N.J., has worked with local healthcare providers, hospitals and physician practices to improve quality, care coordination and costs by focusing on what the organization calls "superusers" and the high-cost "hot spots" in the city.
A new report released Feb. 19 recognizes the nation's top hospitals and cities for hospital care based on in-hospital mortality rates.
The New Jersey Hospital Association is expanding an innovative "gainsharing" pilot program designed to improve healthcare efficiency and reduce costs by promoting better coordination and collaboration among New Jersey hospitals and physicians.
In order to survive in the ever-changing healthcare marketplace while saddled with new healthcare reform mandates, hospitals around the country must optimize three fundamental components of care delivery: clinical/operational integration, financial integration, and shared infrastructure and governance.
These should be the best of times for the patient safety movement. After all, it was concerns over medical mistakes that launched the transformation of our delivery and payment models, from one focused on volume to one that rewards performance. Yet I’ve never been more worried about the safety movement than I am today.
Medicare patients can anticipate paying considerably less for their diabetes and other products starting in July when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expands its competitive bidding for durable medical equipment (DME) and mail-order program but the DME industry continues to point out problems with the program.
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a significant decline in central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), but Consumers Union says more needs to be done, since the report also suggests most hospitals have not made significant overall infection improvements in five years.
Electronic health records (EHRs) have to be usable and useful by physicians and integrate with hospitals' or practices' other systems to benefit providers or else the money spent on them is just wasted.
Communication and teamwork across healthcare systems appears to be a nearly universal challenge, according to a survey of nearly 9,800 primary care physicians representing 11 nations. The Commonwealth Fund released findings of the survey in November 2012, and expanded on several drill-down topics during a webinar presented on Feb. 5.