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Quote of the Month
Governor Earl Long reflected
"I want to be buried in Louisiana, so I can stay active in politics."
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Very old maintain independence through 100th year
While many people associate extreme old age with failing health, new research suggests that many centenarians live independent, healthy lives.
Danish researchers assessed the health, mental capacity and independence of Danes in their 90s over the 10-year run-up to their 100th birthdays. Although only 166 of the original 2,300 subjects survived long enough to reach the century mark, researchers made an interesting discovery: The percentage of those able to take care of themselves in their early 90s was roughly the same as those able to take care of themselves into their 100s. A total of 37% of participants maintained an independent lifestyle at the start of the survey and 33% continued to do so at the end of it.
Because of the independence of the super-elderly, researchers say that a boom in this population might not have a major impact on healthcare expenditures. Findings appear in the August 18-22 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
Will Rogers The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
Gerald R. Ford
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Most Youth With Mental Health Disorders Do Not Receive Recommended Care
Concerned that up to 75% of US children and adolescents with mental health disorders do not receive evidence-based treatment, an American Psychological Association task force is calling for greater dissemination of guidelines among mental health professionals. (American Psychological Association 116th Annual Convention. Presented August 13, 2008.)
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Wall Street Journal August 14, 2008
Hospital Infections:
Preventable and Unacceptable
By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
On July 30, a jury awarded over $2.5 million to James Klotz and his wife Mary in a medical malpractice lawsuit against a heart surgeon, his group practice and St. Anthony's Medical Center in St. Louis, Mo. In 2004 Mr. Klotz, now 69, was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack and a pacemaker was surgically implanted. He developed a drug-resistant staph infection called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It was so severe that he underwent 15 additional operations, spent 84 days in the hospital and lost his right leg, part of his left foot, a kidney and most of his hearing.
Hospital infections will cause the next wave of class-action lawsuits, bigger than the litigation over asbestos. The germ that Mr. Klotz contracted, hospital-acquired MRSA, infects about 880,000 patients a year and accounts for only 8% of all hospital infections. Hospital infections caused by all kinds of bacteria sicken millions.
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| Greetings!
POLITICS AS USUAL ?
This year probably has more people thinking about healthcare issues than ever before, not that I'm optimistic about progress. With the Democratic and Republican national conventions close by (in fact the Republicans are really close in St. Paul, MN) and national elections rushing at us, now might be a good time to reflect on the internal politics of your own organization.
Like it or not, every organization has a political side. That political side can help grease the wheels of progress or stop all change in its tracks. In your organization:
- Does it make a difference WHO is suggesting a new idea?
- Do requests move through the system faster or slower depending on the requester or the department?
- Is there evidence of the board's involvement in day-to-day management?
- Are there both "official" and "unofficial" channels of communication -- one politically correct, the other what you use to actually get something done?
- Does real authority come with a title? Is there an informal "kitchen cabinet" or a "chief of staff" that makes the real decisions, or acts as gatekeeper to the C-Suite?
Take some time to reflect on the state of politics in your organization, is there anything you think should change?
As to national scene, I've been interested in politics since I was in high school (I worked in Abe Lincoln's first campaign) and now I have a good excuse to throw a few political quotes into this newsletter. I hope you enjoy them.
Ken
KenBast@MgtConsultinginHealthcare.com |
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A New Easy-Use-Tool for Improving Patient Satisfaction, Patient Safety, Care Quality and Financial Performance
From time-to-time I discover tools and best practices to help my clients improve care delivery, I recently spent some time investigating Moment-of-Truth-a point-of-care, real time software application for obtaining customer feedback to help improve patient satisfaction, safety, care quality and financial performance. From my perspective, Moment-of-Truth seems simple to use, effective, reasonably priced and worth examining.
Simple to Use
There are several ways to utilize Moment-of-Truth. Outpatient customers are invited to provide feedback at a kiosk and volunteers, nurse managers or patient advocates invite inpatient customer feedback on an ultra mobile PC.
The questions posed are defined by the organization itself and most often relate to issues important to Baldridge, Magnet, TCAB or Planetree designation, HCAHPS and Never Events, as well as specific issues of the moment. Two examples of Never Event impact questions are "How often does our staff wash their hands in your room prior to interacting with you?" or "How often is your medical identification checked prior to receiving medications or tests?"
Email reporting is provided in virtually any format/frequency-though the most often statistical reports are provided weekly, trend reports-monthly and patient responses to open ended questions-such as "What one thing could we do to improve your experience at General Hospital?"-daily. Patients are also able to page a manager from Moment-of-Truth allowing staff to immediately address any issues before patients leave the facility.
Moment-of-Truth differs in purpose and effect from post-discharge paper-based sample surveys in that the latter provides important benchmark data-and Moment-of-Truth provides timely information to improve those benchmark scores.
Highly Effective
Moment of Truth is the 2008 Innovation in Healthcare National Award recipient from the Medical Group Management Association-and for good reason. According to Paul Sommers, PhD, Director of Mission Effectiveness and Quality at Hudson Hospital (Hudson, Wisconsin):
"Moment-of-Truth has been the key tool we have used at Hudson Hospital to establish a customer-service focused care environment and to provide our staff with the real-time information they need to help deliver exceptional care for our customers. As evidence of the impact of Moment-of-Truth, in the past two years we have improved our HCAHPS "would-recommend" scores from 88% to 98% and many of our quality scores are now in the top 8% of the nation. In addition to this, during this same time period-billing credits due to service issues decreased by 54% and nursing turnover decreased from 14.9% to 5.1%."
Healthcare delivery without real-time feedback can be like running an obstacle course blindfolded. Moment-of-Truth removes the blindfold by providing information to care delivery and quality teams that help them immediately address service issues which might otherwise become a reportable CMS event and to incorporate rapid cycle learning into updated care delivery processes, education and resource support.
Reasonably Priced
The cost for Moment-of-Truth is far less than the probable benefit. The per-device service is $99/month and the report/hosting fee is $249/month. The cost for a Moment of Truth Program using 4 devices gathering only 4 surveys per hour, 5 days a week-including hardware-is less than $.40 per survey-a small cost for information that can help improve customer satisfaction, patient safety, and care quality-while positively impacting revenue and net income.
For more information on Moment-of-Truth contact me at mgtconsultinginhealthcare.com or visit Moment-of-Truth's parent company, Vertical Systems, web site at www.vertsys.com. It's worth a look.
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