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Total 972 results found since Jan 2013.
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
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
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
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
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
Don't forget to floss . . . and take your drugs
An MD friend is a substance abuse counselor here in Massachusetts. She reported to me that a substantial percentage of her clients have been able to maintain their addiction through supplies of opiates prescribed by dentists. In all the recent talk about excessive use of opiates, I had never heard about this source.So I wondered if there has been any study of this by the profession or coverage of this issue by the media. After a search, I found this 2010 report from the Tufts Health Care Institute Program on Opioid Risk Management. Excerpts:The top specialty prescribing IR [immediate release] opioids in t...
Source: Running a hospital - February 1, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Help the snowbirds: Transparency as an enforcement tool
Elisabeth Rosenthal at the New York Times has a gift for taking what is right in front of us and unnoticed and making it evident. She does it again in this story about elderly "snowbirds" in Florida who are persuaded by doctors there to undergo unnecessary tests. The lede:Like many retirees, one couple from upstate New York visit doctors in their winter getaway in Florida. But on a recent routine checkup of a pacemaker, a cardiologist there insisted on scheduling several expensive tests even though the 91-year-old husband had no symptoms.“You walk in the door, and they just start doing things,” said Sally Spencer...
Source: Running a hospital - February 1, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Do you know you're in my lane?
An excellent video about texting while driving:
Source: Running a hospital - February 1, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Success in Ipswich
Back in 2012, my colleague and I ran some workshops for senior management and clinical leaders introducing the Lean philosophy and some of its practices at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust. As noted at the time:We started with an introduction based on the Toast Kaizen video produced by and featuring GBMP president Bruce Hamilton. Then it was off to gemba, the "factory shop" floor, where the class members shadowed a member of the staff. The idea was to practice observation skills and try to identify the various types of waste found in all organizations. The class members gained a new appreciation for the degree o...
Source: Running a hospital - January 31, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
The judge saw through the lie
In a Boston Globe story, here's how Priyanka Dayal McCluskey reports on how the outgoing CEO of Partners Healthcare System described the deal that was turned down today by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders:“The judge has said ‘no’ to an agreement that we believe would have paved a pathway to delivering high-quality care closer to home for patients and their families in a lower cost community-based setting."Well, no. First of all, there was no need for PHS to acquire these hospitals to achieve proper care management for patients. All it takes is an agreement to coordinate care and share access ...
Source: Running a hospital - January 30, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Do health plans have a future?
Not to be cynical but in the insurance business the best way to make money is to discourage risky people from becoming policyholders and to exclude from coverage anything that a policyholder is likely to file a claim for.
In the real world, insurance regulations temper these strategies, but don’t eliminate them completely. Health insurers in particular now have to operate within a narrow corridor. Under the Affordable Care Act they can’t discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and must offer a fairly standardized set of benefits. Their profitability is also capped by the minimum Medical Los...
Source: Health Business Blog - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Authors: dewe67 Tags: Health plans Policy and politics Source Type: blogs
Marching, but where? Moscow, I fear.
Melanie Evans and Bob Herman at Modern Healthcare report that "a new task force made up of providers, insurers and employers has committed to shift 75% of its members' business into contracts with incentives for health outcomes, quality and cost management by January 2020."What's up? Well, the theory is that risk-based payment mechanisms like "accountable care, bundled payments and other contracts with the potential for rewards or penalties based on quality performance and better cost control" will bring about greater efficiency and higher quality in the health care system. It is argued that the current system, mainl...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Lynne: Initial CMS Evaluations of Readmissions Have Serious Flaws
Joanne Lynn M.D., Director of the Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness at Altarum Institute, wields a scalpel and a battle axe in her recent criticism of initial CMS evaluations of readmissions. The lede:The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has quietly put out two evaluations of the readmissions work– and both documents are remarkable for their failure to evaluate the programs fairly or to provide insights as to what works in what circumstances.Excerpts:The readmissions/discharges metric that CMS and its evaluators use for categorizing success or failure is seriously flawed. There is no reason...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
John Q. Sherman Award for Excellence in Patient Engagement
It's time again for the John Q. Sherman Award for Excellence in Patient Engagement.This year’s award will be conferred by Standard Register Healthcare in partnership with the National Patient Safety Foundation’s (NPSF) Lucian Leape Institute at the 2015 NPSF Patient Safety Congress in Austin, Texas on April 30 and the award-winning program will be featured on EngagingPatients.org.Last year the award was given to the Open Notes Collaborative and Dr. Nasia Safdar, hospital epidemiologist for the University of Wisconsin Hospital. Who was Mr. Sherman? Here's background:Founder of Standard Register, Joh...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Sampson engages through Chop Chop
I love Sally Sampson's enthusiastic persistence with regard to teaching kids about tasty good food. She has been publishing Chop Chop magazine for some time now, and each issue is a treasure of ideas and stories. The magazine is widely endorsed by pediatricians and is distributed through children’s hospitals, health centers, public schools, afterschool programs, Indian reservations, and community organizations. ChopChop is also available at newsstands and by subscription.Here's the latest set of blog posts. I like this one on knife skills, with this introduction:Slicing, dicing, chopping, and cutting: it’s ...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
