Be in the Know: Feature Story
Improving Care for the Dying: Transforming Patients’ Wishes into High-Quality Palliative Care
Three palliative care learning centers were established in Pennsylvania through an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant. The purpose of the centers was to host site visits by other hospitals interested in planning and developing similar palliative care units. In phase II, the project planned to spread learning centers to hospital-based palliative care centers in other parts of the country. To date, lessons learned include that many hospitals have been reluctant to adopt the program because revenues are reduced if people spend less time in the hospital, even though use and cost of inappropriate services are also decreased. Read more.
NOTE: Please feel free to use this newsletter as a networking tool. For example, you can forward copies to your colleagues in Brownsville, Harlingen and Weslaco and highlight those articles they might find particularly interesting.
Save the Date: H2H Best Practices Webinar – Series III, July 27
Texas Quality Matters: New Website with Evidence-Based Guidelines
New Government Website Publishes 30-Day Readmission and Mortality Rates
Preventing Heart Failure Readmissions: Is Your Organization Prepared?
30-day Heart Failure Readmissions Linked to When Outpatient Care Received
Hospital Readmission and Multiple Emergency Department Visits, in Selected States, 2006-2007
Innovations in Preventing and Managing Chronic Conditions: What’s Working in the Real World?
Save the Date: H2H Best Practices Webinar – Series III, July 27
Join the next Hospital to Home (H2H) webinar entitled “Best Practices – Series III” on Tuesday, July 27, from noon – 1 p.m. CT. Presentations by Premier, Inc., the Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center and Heartland Health will be featured. Easy registration.
Texas Quality Matters: New Website with Evidence-Based Guidelines
Service providers are invited to visit www.TexasQualityMatters.org. It’s a website developed by the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS) to disseminate evidence-based guidelines related to providing quality care as well as other health care information. Current topics include medication safety, fall prevention and more.
Visit the website.
New Government Website Publishes 30-Day Readmission and Mortality Rates
New data on 30-day readmission and 30-day mortality rates was recently published on a fresh website that Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says “will help patients and their families better compare quality at America’s hospitals.” The rates encompass three full years of claims data for inpatients admitted for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. The HealthCare.gov Hospital Compare tool shows whether a hospital’s mortality or readmission rate is “Better than,” “No different than” or “Worse than” the national rate.
Read more.
Back to Top | Improving Patient Care | Health Care Reform | Other Health Care News
Preventing Heart Failure Readmissions: Is Your Organization Prepared?
New payment models for more efficiently managing post-acute care of Medicare patients with heart failure are discussed. Proposed payment changes tied to readmissions are explained with strategies that place nurses at the center of efforts to decrease cardiovascular readmissions. (Easy Medscape registration required. Then use “search” to find article.)
Read more.
30-day Heart Failure Readmissions Linked to When Outpatient Care Received
According to the May 26 Remington Healthcare MegaTrend News, data from an American Heart Association quality improvement program reveals patients who have timely follow-up appointments after hospital discharge are about 15 percent less likely to need rehospitalization.
Read more.
Hospital Readmission and Multiple Emergency Department Visits, in Selected States, 2006-2007 (PDF)
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created a set of supplemental files, called the “Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Revisit Files,” to facilitate research focusing on repeat hospital visits. These files are available to analysts and allow tracking a patient across time and hospital setting while adhering to strict privacy regulations. Findings: Most readmission studies only report information on patients who have multiple hospital inpatient stays. After including Emergency Department visits, four in ten patients made multiple trips to the hospital over the two years of this study, with an average of 2.1 visits per patient.
Read more (PDF).
Innovations in Preventing and Managing Chronic Conditions: What’s Working in the Real World?
Promoting health and wellness and improving the care of people with chronic conditions offer promise in helping to improve the value of health care and control costs, according to experts at a Center for Studying Health System Change conference. The issue brief linked here provides a summary of the conference. Issue Brief No. 132.
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How to Eliminate $3.6 Trillion in Healthcare Waste: Thomson Reuters Paper Identifies Five Proven Strategies
This Thomson Reuters white paper lays out five “real-world” strategies that the U.S. health care industry can use to slash $3.6 trillion in unnecessary costs. Included are strategies for helping patients understand their options; better care coordination; identifying and controlling chronic diseases; building in checklists and best practices; and using computerized data to catch inconsistencies and decrease fraud.
Read the study.
Back to Top | Announcements and Education | Improving Patient Care | Other Health Care News
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-10-40