Healthcare reform, rising costs: A conversation with Paul Keckley about America's 'Bitter Pill'
by Ilene MacDonald
Journalist Steven Brill has been making the rounds promoting his new book, "America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System."
The book details the behind-the-scenes political infighting and industry lobbying over the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This week my colleague Ron Shinkman gave his take on Brill's latest piece and the different light it casts on healthcare finance from the prism of his social status.
Last week Brill published a piece in Time about his personal experience of being a patient at New York Presbyterian where he had open heart s...
Source: hospital impact - February 2, 2015 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Hospital reputation lessons from the football field to the tennis court
by Kent Bottles
Hospital leaders can learn a lesson about reputation management from two current sports stories. The first story is the well-known "Deflategate," and the second is the less-publicized example of sportsmanship from the Australian Tennis Open.
Even those who don't follow the NFL have been inundated with stories about how the New England Patriots played the first half of their AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts with footballs that had been deflated. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has in the past stated that he favors footballs that are underinflated, and numerous former players have noted t...
Source: hospital impact - February 2, 2015 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Does decision support actually work?
by Lynn McVey
The medical imaging website Aunt Minnie.com asked the question, "Does decision support work?" I got tricked at first, because I thought it was a question about decisions. Aunt Minnie's question was about the appropriateness of imaging ordering, which happens to be experiencing growing pains.
For years, I've always questioned the accuracy of "decision support." When we play the game "Telephone," even the simplest phrase, "The moon is made from green cheese" ends up as "The cream cheese on the spoon is creamy." I exaggerate, yet something always gets lost in translation.
This is why I always perform my own...
Source: hospital impact - February 2, 2015 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
How monitoring low-acuity patients improves health outcomes
The objective was to facilitate early recognition of deterioration and cue rescue interventions at the earliest possible moment. Notifications were sent to a patient's nurse via pager when monitor values were outside established physiologic limits, with an escalation if there was no response.
Q: Were you concerned about a possible increase in alarm monitoring? If so, what did you do to minimize such events?
A: The possibility of increased alarms was certainly a concern. To proactively address this issue, we lowered thresholds and widened ranges consistent with the work done at Dartmouth. We have found that this decreased...
Source: hospital impact - February 2, 2015 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Moving beyond centeredness in patient experience
by Jason A. Wolf
Last year I had the honor to co-author an article, Defining Patient Experience, for the inaugural issue of Patient Experience Journal, of which I also serve as editor. The exercise in conducting the research review and construction of the piece reinforced a fundamental shift I have seen occurring as we work to push the patient experience movement forward. That is, we are entering an era when the concept of centeredness, while critical and central, is no longer enough.
In our article we identified "experience" to encompass personal interactions, organization culture and patient (and family) perceptions, a...
Source: hospital impact - February 2, 2015 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Small hospital changes can make big healthcare impact
by Scott Kashman
In April 2011, President Obama discussed his plan to curb the growth of healthcare costs.
The framework called for $340 billion in cuts over 10 years and $480 billion by 2023 (including the proposals already included in the president's budget). Over the subsequent decade, the president's proposal will save more than $1 trillion by further bending the cost curve, doubling the savings from the Affordable Care Act. That plan called for increasing the amount of uninsured by 50 million people.
Throughout my career, one thing remained constant: Our evolving and transforming healthcare industry. We could get o...
Source: hospital impact - September 1, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
The evolution of PACS
by Dan Bowman
As the healthcare industry increasingly adopts new accountable care payment models, providers must determine the most cost-effective ways to deliver quality patient care. In the case of radiologists, that means improving communication with fellow doctors and cutting back on unnecessary imaging as reimbursement dollars will be handed out based, not on the volume of patient tests conducted, but the sustained good health of those patients.
To that end, the evolution of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) is crucial.
"PACS is good for many things; it's changed the way we practice and we're not g...
Source: hospital impact - September 1, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Procter & Gamble's lesson for hospitals: Reduce complexity
by Kenneth Kaufman
"We are going to create a faster growing, more profitable company that's far simpler to operate," said Procter & Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley, announcing that the parent company of some of the world's most well-known products would be shedding half of its 200 brands.
The situation that led Procter & Gamble to this move has some striking parallels to the situation for today's hospitals. Like Procter & Gamble, hospitals are well-known brands in their communities. Like Procter & Gamble, hospitals' delivery networks have grown over time, creating great complexity in structure and operations. A...
Source: hospital impact - September 1, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Working hard or hardly working? 8 steps to hold productive meetings
by Darlene A. Cunha
Meetings are an inevitable part of every organization, but broken meetings are bad for business. Meetings can lead to productivity or frustration. Unfortunately, many of the meetings we attend leave us feeling like hamsters on a wheel playing catch up with the work we left behind.
As healthcare continues to evolve, I find meetings take an increasing number of hours in the workday, and yet most employees regard them as a waste of time. In a 2012 survey conducted by Salary.com, U.S. professionals ranked meetings as the No. 1 office productivity killer. Bad meetings waste time, squash employee engagement...
Source: hospital impact - September 1, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Boost patient experience at first point of contact: The call center
by Andrea J. Simon
I recently worked with a hospital improve its cancer program. It had wonderful doctors and an up-to-date facility. Nurses were very patient-focused and the staff smiled a lot. What could be better?
Yet new patient volumes were sluggish and growth elusive. The hospital found the highly competitive local market very challenging, especially because differentiation--a meaningful point of difference--was pretty much non-existent. In truth, the area hospitals were all pretty much the same. How could it compete? Most of the ideas focused on the patient experience inside the hospital.
So instead, we decided ...
Source: hospital impact - September 1, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Patient experience, satisfaction not one and the same
by Jason A. Wolf
Consumer choice is the new frontier of the healthcare marketplace. While I haven't found anyone that challenges that fact, I encounter many that still resist this reality in their actions and efforts. In the simplest of terms, consumers are people that select a product and pay for it, and we see this happen in significant ways in healthcare today.
With higher deductibles, a broader range of care options and more, healthcare organizations have to work harder to attract the customer to their door (and keep them) at all points on the care continuum, from physician practices and outpatient centers, to acute ...
Source: hospital impact - August 3, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Patient-centered care about more than just financial gains
by Thomas Dahlborg
This week my intention was to follow up my recent post highlighting kindness, compassion and patient-centered care with additional positive signs of a healthcare transformation where patients and families are engaged, care teams are healthy and whole and positioned to honor their patients, and patient preferences, patient safety and healthcare outcomes are all being optimized.
And then two things happened.
The first was a discussion within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWFJ) Leadership Network LinkedIn forum. I asked a question relative to patient engagement, tools, lessons learned and best prac...
Source: hospital impact - August 3, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
How hospitals help people through social media
by Nancy Cawley Jean
It's no secret that people take to social media when they have a complaint. It's been said many times that brands need to be in social media, because even if the brand isn't out there, people can still mention it, in both good and bad ways.
A hospital is certainly no exception to this rule, especially when you think about how important quality of care is to people when their health is threatened and they face a hospital visit. When it comes to healthcare, expectations are high. So when their care isn't up to par, it's a safe bet people will shout it from their Facebook status updates, tweets and mo...
Source: hospital impact - August 3, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Care coordination movement picks up speed in Maryland hospitals
by Carmela Coyle
With national healthcare leaders and federal regulators focusing now more than ever on how to achieve the triple aim of healthcare--reduced costs, better outcomes and improved patient experience--experiments on the best way to achieve this sprout up throughout the country.
One of the major movements in recent years is a push toward care coordination--the implementation of best practices so that patient care among different healthcare partners like hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and primary care physicians is harmonized and best serves the patient. The concept of care coordination has been around f...
Source: hospital impact - August 3, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
5 ways to reduce supply chain costs
by Shon Wettstein
As payment models move from fee-for-service to value-based care, hospitals and health systems work to maintain hospital budgets by reducing spending by 20 to 30 percent across individual departments. To that end, many hospitals realized significant savings is the medical device supply chain--one of a hospital's costliest areas. Supply costs are usually the second largest expense in a hospital after labor--and industry analysts predict they will take the top slot by 2020.
Understanding this problem is one thing, but solving it is another. Most surgeons are unaware of their supply costs or how to reduce...
Source: hospital impact - August 3, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
