Showing posts with label Hospital. quality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hospital. quality. Show all posts

Saturday, April 9, 2011

CMS Releases Hospital Error, Injury Data

By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began reporting hospital-specific rates of eight hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), so patients can compare how often the nation's 4,700 hospitals make preventable medical errors.

The eight conditions are foreign object retained after surgery, air embolism, blood incompatibility, stage III and IV pressure ulcers, falls and trauma, vascular catheter-associated infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, and manifestations of poor glycemic control.

"By making HAC data transparent, CMS sheds light on those preventable events where patients are harmed while seeking care," the agency said in a press release.
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Thursday, February 17, 2011

Intermountain Healthcare's McKay-Dee Hospital Center: Driving Down Readmissions by Caring for Patients the "Right Way" - The Commonwealth Fund

Authors: Sharon Silow-Carroll, M.B.A., M.S.W., and Jennifer N. Edwards, Dr.P.H.

Downloads-Case Study (1745K PDF)

Overview

McKay-Dee Hospital Center in Ogden, Utah, part of the Intermountain Healthcare System, had readmission rates in the lowest 3 percent of hospitals across the nation for all three clinical areas reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the selection period, and its heart failure and pneumonia readmission rates were within the best 1 percent of hospitals reporting (Exhibit 1).
McKay-Dee’s success may be attributed to the following:
  • comprehensive quality improvement strategies, supported by extensive, systemwide clinical research and training in evidence-based care;
  • standardization of care through "care process models," or clinical protocols, and heavy use of hospitalists;
  • information systems designed to monitor quality;
  • interdisciplinary care coordination and discharge planning with individualized patient education and scheduling of follow-up appointments before discharge;
  • comprehensive identification of heart disease patients for education, post-discharge phone calls, and referral to the outpatient heart failure clinic;
  • integration with community providers, both within and outside of Intermountain's network, which provides a continuum of care and helps ensure patients are connected with a medical home; and
  • Intermountain's role as a leader in health care delivery and payment innovations, exemplified in its involvement with pilots of bundled payment/accountable care arrangements.
Readmission Rates

The Intermountain Healthcare System is a highly integrated system with multiple hospitals, primary care practices and clinics, an outpatient heart clinic, home health service, and a renowned clinical research institute. Membership in this system provides clear advantages in terms of shared resources and expertise, and enhanced communication across care settings. Nevertheless, McKay-Dee's experiences provide lessons for other hospitals and systems—even less-integrated entities—that are striving to reduce readmission rates as well as improve outcomes and maximize systemwide efficiencies.

First, McKay-Dee Hospital Center and Intermountain Healthcare operate on the premise that lower readmission rates, better quality measure scores, and financial savings are not the primary focus of their efforts, but rather byproducts of caring for patients correctly. Second, alignment of hospital care with outpatient care improves transitions and health outcomes. Third, it is critical to select and nurture physician leaders who embrace a hospital's quality measurement and reporting philosophy. If other physicians do not respond through medical leadership and incentives, it may be necessary to hold them to a higher level of accountability to encourage their adherence to clinical protocols. Current payment policy that rewards volume rather than clinical outcomes conflicts with some of these desired practices. Over the long term, changes to the incentives in the health care system are needed to align goals across hospitals and other stakeholders.

This study was based on publicly available information and self-reported data provided by the case study institution(s). The aim of Commonwealth Fund–sponsored case studies of this type is to identify institutions that have achieved results indicating high performance in a particular area of interest, have undertaken innovations designed to reach higher performance, or exemplify attributes that can foster high performance. The studies are intended to enable other institutions to draw lessons from the studied institutions' experience that will be helpful in their own efforts to become high performers. Even the best-performing organizations may fall short in some areas or make mistakes—emphasizing the need for systematic approaches to improve quality and prevent harm to patients and staff. The Commonwealth Fund is not an accreditor of health care organizations or systems, and the inclusion of an institution in the Fund's case study series is not an endorsement by the Fund for receipt of health care from the institution.

 

Citation


S. Silow-Carroll and J. N. Edwards, Intermountain Healthcare's McKay-Dee Hospital Center: Driving Down Readmissions by Caring for Patients the "Right Way," The Commonwealth Fund, Feb. 2011.
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Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center: Excellence in Heart Attack Care Reduces Readmissions - The Commonwealth Fund

Authors: Aimee Lashbrook, J.D., M.H.S.A., and Jennifer N. Edwards, Dr.P.H.

Downloads

Overview

Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center (Memorial City) achieved superior readmission rates in two of the three clinical areas reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Its readmission rate for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and pneumonia surpassed the best 10 percent of hospitals in the country for the selection period. Its readmission rate for heart failure was not as strong, outperforming the national average only by a narrow margin. (Exhibit 1)
Readmission Rates Memorial City's achievement of low readmission rates for heart attack and pneumonia appears to be related to the Memorial Hermann Healthcare System's efforts to improve quality and patient safety for all patients. At each of the system's hospitals, staff have sought to provide high-quality, safe care consistent with the highest clinical standards and to avoid problems such as infections or falls that can exacerbate patients' underlying health problems. Memorial City, in particular, has achieved exceptionally high standards in AMI care. They also have increased attention to educating and supporting patients and linking patients—even the uninsured—to needed care after discharge, which likely reduces readmissions.

Specifically, the following efforts and patient-focused interventions, which were initiated by the system and implemented at the hospital, seem to contribute to Memorial City's low readmission rates:
Organizational efforts
  • Emphasis on quality, with a clear leadership vision that is communicated to all clinical staff and backed up by the commitment of needed resources. The health system aims to "do the right thing the first time."
  • Concurrent review of performance on core measures during a patient's stay to monitor achievement of goals, with findings reported to physicians.
  • Extensive employee training related to the system's top priorities to make sure everyone is "rowing in the right direction."
Patient-focused interventions
  • Planning for discharge begins upon admission, with staff actively educating patients about their disease and connecting patients with a source of ongoing care, even if they lack insurance coverage. The hospital offers a community-based disease management program for uninsured patients with chronic illness.
  • Risk-assessment software helps case managers establish the appropriate level of care and assess a patient’s readiness for discharge.
  • Pharmacists are located in high-risk units to provide medication education to patients and help simplify home medication regimens.
  • Iterative process improvements in AMI care have resulted in a lower door-to-balloon time, which preserves heart muscle, thus reducing complications and the risk of readmission. Memorial City’s average door-to-balloon time is around 65 minutes, compared with the Joint Commission's standard of 90 minutes.
Planning for discharge begins upon admission, with staff actively educating patients about their disease and connecting patients with a source of ongoing care, even if they lack insurance coverage. The hospital offers a community-based disease management program for uninsured patients with chronic illness.

This study was based on publicly available information and self-reported data provided by the case study institution(s). The aim of Commonwealth Fund–sponsored case studies of this type is to identify institutions that have achieved results indicating high performance in a particular area of interest, have undertaken innovations designed to reach higher performance, or exemplify attributes that can foster high performance. The studies are intended to enable other institutions to draw lessons from the studied institutions' experience that will be helpful in their own efforts to become high performers. Even the best-performing organizations may fall short in some areas or make mistakes—emphasizing the need for systematic approaches to improve quality and prevent harm to patients and staff. The Commonwealth Fund is not an accreditor of health care organizations or systems, and the inclusion of an institution in the Fund's case study series is not an endorsement by the Fund for receipt of health care from the institution.

Citation

A. Lashbrook and J. N. Edwards, Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center: Excellence in Heart Attack Care Reduces Readmissions, The Commonwealth Fund, Feb. 2011.

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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Gap Seen in Readmit Rates by Race, Location

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today

Older black patients admitted to hospital for three common conditions -- congestive heart failure, heart attack, or pneumonia -- are 13% more likely than whites to be readmitted within a month, researchers reported.

But the analysis of Medicare discharge data for more than three million patients, also found disparities related to where patients get care -- both blacks and whites treated at hospitals with a large proportion of black patients had even higher readmission rates, according to Karen Joynt, MD, PhD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues.

Overall, about one in five older patients admitted to the hospital with heart failure, MI, or pneumonia were readmitted within 30 days, Joynt and co-authors wrote in the Feb. 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

U.S. GAO - Medicare: CMS Needs to Collect Consistent Information from Quality Improvement Organizations to Strengthen Its Establishment of Budgets for Quality of Care Reviews


Full Report (PDF, 24 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)

Summary

Medicare funds health care services for more than 46 million beneficiaries. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)--the agency that administers Medicare--contracts with private organizations known as Quality Improvement Organizations (QIO) to, among other core functions, improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. CMS contracts with one QIO for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. One of the QIOs' many responsibilities is to review quality of care concerns, raised by Medicare beneficiaries or others, to determine whether Medicare-financed medical services meet professionally recognized standards of health care. Quality of care reviews may address a range of issues, such as inappropriate treatment or hospital staff not administering medications on time; may involve a variety of health care services and settings; and may include a range of Medicare providers or practitioners. CMS enters into 3-year contracts with QIOs for a range of activities and reviews, including quality of care reviews. For each QIO contract, CMS establishes a budget reflecting the estimated costs of these activities and reviews. For the most recent contracts, which cover August 1, 2008, through July 31, 2011, CMS's budgets for the QIOs totaled about $1.1 billion, with approximately $208 million for all types of reviews, including QIOs' quality of care reviews, as well as some other activities. Questions have been raised about CMS's ability to set budgets appropriately for QIOs' quality of care reviews. A 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and a 2008 internal report commissioned by CMS identified weaknesses in CMS's ability to accurately compare costs across QIOs. Based on reports of wide variation in the costs that QIOs report for conducting these reviews, Congress raised questions about how CMS establishes QIOs' budgets. Ensuring that QIOs' budgets are based on accurate information is particularly important because CMS's contracts with the QIOs are funded from the Medicare Trust Funds, which are primarily used to support inpatient and outpatient health care services for Medicare beneficiaries. QIO contracts are funded from the Medicare Trust Funds in proportions from each that CMS determines to be fair and equitable, and the QIO program is not subject to the same kind of congressional oversight as other CMS programs, which are funded through the annual appropriations process. Policymakers are concerned about the long-term solvency of these Trust Funds and thus their ability to fund health care services for Medicare beneficiaries in the future. Congress raised questions about the information QIOs report to CMS for budgeting purposes and how CMS uses this information. To assist congressional consideration of this matter, this report describes and assesses the information CMS uses to establish the portion of QIOs' budgets for quality of care reviews.

To help establish QIOs' budgets for quality of care reviews for the current contract, the 9th Statement of Work, CMS used information that QIOs are required to provide to the agency about the volume of QIOs' quality of care reviews and the costs associated with conducting these reviews. CMS requires the QIOs to record information about the volume of their quality of care reviews in CMS's Case Review Information System (CRIS) and to record information about their labor costs in CMS's Financial Information and Vouchering System (FIVS). However, CMS has not established clear instructions for how QIOs should record volume and cost information in these systems. We found inconsistencies among some QIOs in the ways they record certain volume and cost information in CRIS and FIVS. As a result, the historical quality of care review volume and cost information CMS obtains is inconsistent across QIOs and CMS cannot be assured that the budgets it establishes for QIOs' quality of care reviews are appropriate.


Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director: Kathleen M. King
Team: Government Accountability Office: Health Care
Phone: No phone on record


Recommendations for Executive Action

Recommendation: To ensure that QIOs consistently record volume and cost information for their quality of care reviews and to help ensure that the budgets CMS establishes for these reviews are appropriate, the Administrator of CMS should develop clear instructions specifying how QIOs should record information about the volume and costs of their quality of care reviews in CRIS and FIVS.

Agency Affected: Department of Health and Human Services: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Status: In process

Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Patient Safety beyond the Hospital | Health Policy and Reform

Tejal K. Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., and Thomas H. Lee, M.D.

The vast majority of health care is delivered in ambulatory settings, yet we are only just beginning to understand the safety risks that exist outside of hospital walls. There are 900 million visits to physicians’ offices in the United States each year, as compared with 35 million hospital discharges,1 and spending on outpatient care is the fastest growing segment of health care spending.2 Yet most patient-safety research and safety-improvement work have been done in inpatient settings; indeed, a search of the Patient Safety Network Web site of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows that since 2005 only about 10% of patient-safety studies have been performed in outpatient settings.

Experience to date indicates that safety issues in the ambulatory setting differ from those in the inpatient setting in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. There are differences in the types of errors (treatment errors predominate in inpatient settings, whereas diagnostic errors do in outpatient settings), the provider–patient relationship (e.g., adherence is more critical in outpatient settings), organizational structure (ambulatory practices tend to lack the infrastructure and expertise to address quality and safety improvement), and regulatory and legislative requirements (e.g., there are staffing ratios and accreditation requirements for hospitals that do not exist for private practices).3 In addition, the signal-to-noise ratio is much lower in outpatient settings: in ambulatory care, a physician may see 100 patients with chest pain before seeing one with an actual myocardial infarction.

The outpatient setting also presents greater challenges for information transfer. Particularly in the case of patients with complex medical needs, the responsibility for care is often shared by multiple providers at many institutions. These clinicians may never meet, and they often use different medical-record systems. Such care has long, fragile feedback loops. In the hospital, if a patient has an adverse drug event, clinicians become aware of it very quickly; in the outpatient setting, a complication or missed diagnosis may not be identified for months, if ever.
Full Article

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Accountability Measures — Using Measurement to Promote Quality Improvement | Health Care Reform Center

by Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., Jerod M. Loeb, Ph.D., Stephen P. Schmaltz, Ph.D., and Robert M. Wachter, M.D.

Measuring the quality of health care and using those measurements to promote improvements in the delivery of care, to influence payment for services, and to increase transparency are now commonplace. These activities, which now involve virtually all U.S. hospitals, are migrating to ambulatory and other care settings and are increasingly evident in health care systems worldwide. Many constituencies are pressing for continued expansion of programs that rely on quality measurement and reporting.

In this article, we review the origins of contemporary standardized quality measurement, with a focus on hospitals, where such programs have reached their most highly developed state. We discuss some lessons learned from recent experience and propose a conceptual framework to guide future developments in this fast-moving field. Although many of the points we make are relevant to all kinds of quality measurement, including outcome measures, we focus our comments on process measures, both because these account for most of the measures in current use and because outcome measures have additional scientific challenges surrounding the need for case-mix adjustment. We write not as representatives of the Joint Commission articulating a specific new position of that group, but rather as individuals who have worked in the fields of quality measurement and improvement in a variety of roles and settings over many years.
Full Article
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Friday, July 23, 2010

Joint Replacement Registry Improves Quality of Care from MedPage Today

By Nancy Walsh, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

A total joint replacement registry begun in California in 2001 has enhanced patient safety and quality of care by tracking implant performance and outcomes, according to a new report.

For instance, registry data have shown that the cumulative five-year survival of both primary total hip and knee replacements currently is 97.3%, reported Elizabeth W. Paxton, MD, from Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, and colleagues.

Analysis of data from the registry also has determined that the main reasons for hip revisions are instability and infections, the researchers wrote online in Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research.
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Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Quality of HF Care Not Better Despite Shorter Stays - from MedPage Today

By Todd Neale, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Although hospital length of stay and inhospital mortality are decreasing for older patients with heart failure, that doesn't necessarily mean quality of care is improving, a large observational study showed.

From 1993 to 2006, length of stay and inhospital mortality significantly decreased in the U.S., but postdischarge mortality and 30-day readmission rates increased -- by a relative 49% and 17%, respectively;Journal of the American Medical Association.
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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Transparency and Public Reporting Are Essential for a Safe Health Care System

What will it take to motivate hospitals to do what we know works to make health care safer? Of the three major approaches to improving patient safety—regulation/accreditation, financial incentives, and public reporting—the most promising is public reporting of performance information and feedback to providers. Transparency is an idea whose time has come and both hospitals and the public will be better off because of it.

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Monday, March 15, 2010

Some Older ER Patients Are Getting The Wrong Medicines

(Medical News Today) A University of Michigan study recently published in Academic Emergency Medicine says that it is common for patients 65 and older to receive potentially inappropriate medications when treated in an emergency room.

Nearly 19.5 million older patients, or 16.8 percent of eligible emergency visits from 2000-2006, received one or more potentially inappropriate medications - or PIMs. The large sample of approximately 470,000 ED and outpatient clinic visits, corresponding to a national estimate of about 1.5 billion total visits, allowed the researchers to determine the extent of the problem nationwide.

"There are certain medications that probably are not good to give to older adults because the potential benefits are outweighed by potential problems," says lead author, William J. Meurer, M.D., M.S., assistant professor, U-M Departments of Emergency Medicine and Neurology.
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Friday, March 12, 2010

Nurse Staffing Level Matters in Hip Fracture Outcomes - in MedPage Today

Line drawing of fractured hipImage via Wikipedia

By Todd Neale, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Older patients with a hip fracture are more likely to die when admitted to hospitals with lower nurse staffing levels, a retrospective study showed.
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

ADVERSE EVENTS IN HOSPITALS: METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING EVENTS

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the usefulness of selected methods for identifying events that harm hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries.

BACKGROUND
The term “adverse event” describes harm to a patient as a result of medical care or harm that occurs in a health care setting. The term “never events” refers to a specific list of serious events, such as surgery on the wrong patient, that the National Quality Forum deemed “should never occur in a healthcare setting.” The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 (the Act) mandated that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) report to Congress about such events, including making recommendations about processes for identifying events. To meet the requirements of the Act, OIG published a series of reports in 2008 and will publish additional reports based on ongoing work.

In 2008, OIG conducted a case study to determine the incidence of adverse events (hereinafter referred to as events) by reviewing a random sample of 278 Medicare beneficiary hospitalizations selected from all Medicare discharges from acute care hospitals in two selected counties during a 1-week period in August 2008. Using a two-stage review process, the case study identified 120 events. The first stage consisted of using five selected methods to screen for events, including nurse reviews of medical records, interviews of Medicare beneficiaries, two types of billing data analysis, and reviews of internal hospital incident reports. Each time a screening method indicated the possibility that an event occurred during the hospitalization, researchers designated the possible event as a “flag.” The second stage consisted of physician reviews of medical records for 183 of the 278 beneficiary hospitalizations—those with at least 1 flag. This report provides an indepth examination of the usefulness of the five screening methods used for identifying events. OIG considered the most useful methods to be those that identified the greatest number of events.
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Thursday, February 25, 2010

Hospital Cost of Care, Quality of Care, and Readmission Rates: Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish - The Commonwealth Fund

A study of Medicare beneficiaries admitted to U.S. hospitals with congestive heart failure or pneumonia showed no definitive connection between the cost and quality of care, or between cost and death rates.

The Issue

Hospitals face increasing pressure to lower the cost of health care while at the same time improving quality. Some experts are concerned about the trade-offs between the two goals, wondering whether hospitals with lower costs and lower expenditures might devote less effort to improving quality. Critics wonder if the drive to lower costs might create a "penny-wise and pound-foolish" approach, with hospitals discharging patients sooner, only to increase readmission rates and incur greater inpatient use—and costs—over time. To examine the relationships between quality and cost, researchers analyzed discharge, cost, and quality data for Medicare patients with congestive heart failure and pneumonia at more than 3,000 hospitals.
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Proposed Bill Wants Medical Mishaps To Be Reported By State Hospitals - Courant.com

By MATTHEW KAUFFMAN

All medical mishaps reported by state hospitals would again be made public under legislation to be considered this session by the public health committee.

The proposed bill, drafted by the attorney general's office, would eliminate a confidentiality provision added in 2004 to the state's "adverse event" law; a revision that now keeps most reports secret. The draft also calls on the state Department of Public Health to conduct random audits of hospitals to determine compliance with the reporting law, with each violation bringing a fine as high as $10,000.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Senior Citizens Do Best in Specialized Orthopedic Surgical Care: Medicare Study

The more specialized a hospital is in orthopedic surgical care, the better the outcomes appear to be for senior citizen patients undergoing hip and knee replacement surgery, University of Iowa researchers report in a new study of Medicare patients.

Among more specialized hospitals, there were fewer serious post-surgical complications such as blood clots, infections and heart problems, as well as fewer deaths.

The findings, which were published online Feb. 11 by the British Medical Journal, were based on data for nearly 1.3 million patients who received hip or knee replacement surgeries between 2001 and 2005 at 3,818 hospitals in the United States.
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Murtha's procedure rarely deadly

{{w|John Murtha}}, U.S.Image via Wikipedia

from AARP Bulletin Today

(CNN) -- Taking out a patient's gallbladder is routine. At least 500,000 such surgeries are done each year in the United States. It takes an hour or two, and the patient can go home that day or the next.

But in rare cases, the surgery can be deadly. Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania recently died after complications from the procedure after doctors "hit his intestines" during surgery, a source close to the late congressman told CNN.

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Long-Term Care Hospitals See Little Scrutiny

By Alex Berenson

No one at the hospital noticed that Tina Bell-Jackman was dying.

On the night of June 26, 2007, Ms. Bell-Jackman turned restlessly in her bed in Room 7 at Select Specialty Hospital of Kansas City, a small medical center that specializes in treating chronically ill patients. Ms. Bell-Jackman, a 46-year-old with diabetes, had been hospitalized at Select for five weeks, was increasingly agitated and could not speak because of a surgical hole in her throat. Her physicians had ordered the hospital to keep a sitter with her.

But at 8 p.m., the sitter left, according to a state court lawsuit and a Medicare inspection report. Left alone, Ms. Bell-Jackman tried to get up. Around 9:30 p.m., staff members tied her down with wrist restraints. Around 12:15 a.m., after the restraints had been removed, a nurse injected her with a sedative to calm her.

In other hospitals, an attending physician might have seen Ms. Bell-Jackman. But the Select hospital of Kansas City has no doctors on its staff or its wards overnight. In emergencies, it must call in physicians from outside.

More than 400 similar facilities, called long-term acute care hospitals, have opened nationally in the last 25 years. Few of them have doctors on staff, and most are owned by for-profit companies. The Kansas City hospital is part of a chain called the Select Medical Corporation, a publicly traded Pennsylvania company that runs 89 long-term hospitals, more than any other company.

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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Medical News: Evidence-Based Treatment Improves Older Stroke Victims' Chances - in Cardiovascular, Strokes from MedPage Today

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Older stroke patients remain at higher risk for adverse outcomes than younger ones, but the gap has narrowed with wider implementation of evidence-based guidelines, researchers say.

More than 10% of stroke patients over 80 died in the hospital, compared with 3% of those under age 50, Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, and colleagues reported online in Circulation.

But overall use of guideline-recommended therapies improved substantially in older patients from 2003 to 2009, particularly for patients over 90, they said.

During that time, several hospitals and stroke centers have adopted "Get with the Guidelines," an intervention to apply evidence-based guidelines to care. Adopters have seen "substantial improvements ... in performance measures for ischemic stroke patients, including pharmacological and nonpharmacological management in each age group," the researchers wrote.
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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Western Baptist Hospital: Problem Solving with Pneumonia Care Performance Improvement Teams

Western Baptist Hospital is one of the top-performing hospitals in the country in the pneumonia care process-of-care, or "core" measures. The core measures, developed by the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) and publicly reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), relate to provision of recommended treatment in four clinical areas: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical care. Western Baptist also performs well, above the 85th percentile, on the heart attack and heart failure core measures, though it does not perform as well-below the 50th percentile-on the surgical care core measures.

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