Care Management Improves Quality, Can Decrease Costs for Patients with Complex Health Care Needs
People with five or more chronic conditions spend 17 times more than people without them. This new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Synthesis Project looks at various care management projects to see if they help control costs and improve quality of care for people with complex health care needs. Results showed that care management does improve quality given time, and that programs focusing on the hospital-to-home transition were the most successful at decreasing costs. Read the research report and policy brief.
Patients Don't Know the Medications Prescribed to Them In-Hospital
Basic Geriatric Respiratory Examination
AHRQ Study: Falls Send More Than 2 Million Seniors to Emergency Room
Fumbled Handoffs of Care Coordination Can Lead to Medical Errors
Home Health: OASIS-C: Overview of Quality Measures
Home Health: Security Changes for OASIS Users
Home Health: Prospective Payment System Fact Sheet
Home Health: MedPac May Recommend to Rebase Home Health Payments on Average Costs
Care Transitions Fact Sheet and Medicare QIOs
New Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign Launched
A new and enhanced Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign was launched on January 13, 2010. The HHQI National Campaign is a grassroots movement designed to unite home health stakeholders and multiple health care settings under the shared vision of reducing avoidable hospitalizations and improving medication management. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has contracted with WVMI & Quality Insights to lead this exciting new effort to evolve health care through quality improvement across settings. Learn more.
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Patients Don't Know the Medications Prescribed to Them In-Hospital
Findings of a recent study to evaluate patient knowledge of medications prescribed during a hospital stay are summarized in this Remington Report article. Fifty English-speaking patients participated. Study participants lived near the University of Colorado Hospital, were aged 21 to 89, and said that they knew their medications when they were outpatients. Overall, participants could name less than half their medications prescribed while they were in the hospital. Nursing home patients and those with dementia were excluded. Read more.
Basic Geriatric Respiratory Examination
This is MedScape's most read CME/CNE course activity for 2009. It is intended for health care professionals who treat elderly patients. The goal is to teach practitioners to appropriately assess the respiratory function of elderly patients. Take this continuing education activity.
AHRQ Study: Falls Send More Than 2 Million Seniors to Emergency Room
Seniors treated in hospital EDs for fall related injuries in 2006 represented 2 million individuals and 6.8 billion in emergency and inpatient care costs according to a recent study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Most of the injuries were fractures, 41%, with over half resulting in inpatient admissions. Read more.
Fumbled Handoffs of Care Coordination Can Lead to Medical Errors
A new study published in the September 2009 Journal of General Internal Medicine shows hospital discharge summaries extremely lacking at reporting test results still pending when patients are discharged and also at specifying what physician should receive test results. This lack of communications can lead to critical mistakes in treatment. Read more.
Texas Hospital Selected to Participate in Demonstration Project to Provide Bundled Payments for Hospital and Physician Services—Designed to Encourage Greater Collaboration
Sites selected for a new hospital-based demonstration that will test the use of a bundled payment for both hospital and physician services were announced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in January. Called the Medicare Acute Care Episode (ACE) Demonstration, the project focuses on select orthopedic and cardiovascular inpatient procedures. The goal is to improve quality of care delivered through Medicare fee-for-service. It's expected the demonstration will achieve savings that can be shared between hospitals, physicians, beneficiaries and Medicare. Baptist Health System in San Antonio, Texas, was one of only five sites nationwide selected to participate in the demonstration. Read more.
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Home Health: Pay for Performance Demonstration
The Home Health Pay for Performance (HHP4P) demonstration will offer incentive payments to a sample of Medicare home health agencies for maintaining high levels of quality care, or making significant improvements in the quality of their services. The demonstration project was conducted in seven states—Alabama, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts and Tennessee—From January of 2008 to December 2009. Read more.
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Home Health: OASIS-C: Overview of Quality Measures (PDF)
This PowerPoint presentation from CMS defines quality of care and explains that quality of care can be measured in several areas, including access, structure, patient experience, and process and outcome measures. View the PowerPoint.
Home Health: Security Changes for OASIS Users
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is going to stop allowing shared agency login IDs (used by multiple people) and start requiring individual user IDs. Beginning in February 2010 and wrapping up in August 2010, small groups of states will transition to individual user IDs about every two weeks. As more information is available, it will be posted on your state's OASIS State Welcome Page and on the Internet at the QIES Technical Support Office site.
Home Health: Prospective Payment System Fact Sheet (PDF)
This fact sheet summarizes the criteria for Medicare coverage of Home Health Agency (HHA) Services and provides information on the elements of the Home Health Prospective Payment System. Elements included are payment for the 60-day episode, case-mix adjustment, wage adjustment, outlier payment, adjustment for four or fewer visits, adjustment for change in condition, adjustment for transfer to another HHA or discharge and return to the same HHA. Download fact sheet (PDF).
Home Health: MedPac May Recommend to Rebase Home Health Payments on Average Costs
Draft recommendations from the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC) to congress were voted on in January. Read more.
Care Transitions Fact Sheet and Medicare QIOs (PDF)
The United States has a 17.6% rate of hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge. Of these, The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission estimates up to 76% are preventable. Medicare patients report greater dissatisfaction related to discharges than to any other aspect of care that CMS measures. TMF Health Quality Institute is one of 14 Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) that is engaging health care providers on the local level to improve care coordination and quality. To learn more about types of care transitions interventions commonly being used, read the fact sheet.
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Care Transitions is a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services quality improvement project for Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley administered through TMF Health Quality Institute. It is a regional, collaborative effort to reduce avoidable hospitalizations by improving patient care transitions.
http://caretransitions.tmf.org | 1-866-439-6863 | 512-334-1775 fax | caretransitions@tmf.org
This material was prepared by TMF Health Quality Institute, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Texas, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents presented do not necessarily reflect CMS policy. 9SOW-TX-CT-10-13