Hospital Case Management articles from January 2005

Hospital Case Management archives from January 2005

Creativity is the key to discharge planning for hard-to-place patients: develop a relationship with skilled nursing facilities.
January 1, 2005... Hospital discharge planners often have to use their ingenuity in finding placements for patients with no insurance who need post-acute services or are homeless and need a place to stay. The problem is that patients must be discharged...

Case managing the uninsured.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... With the number of uninsured Americans at 45 million and climbing, hospitals must come up with creative ways to provide treatment for these and other patients who can't pay. In this issue, we'll look at some of the challenges that hospitals...

Hospitals challenged by patients who can't pay: charity care should be saved for the truly needy.
January 1, 2005... Case managers, along with other hospital staff, are challenged today by an increasing number of patients who can't pay their bill. As health insurance costs escalate and employers provide a lower level of coverage for employees of cut out...

Establish a special area for nonurgent ED patients: CMs should triage patients to proper level of care.
January 1, 2005... The sign over your emergency department's (ED) door may say emergency," but the people who walk in may not necessarily be having one. "The emergency department has become the gateway for everything, particularly among the population that...

Education decreases ED visits for young asthma patients: team works with patients and families.(Critical Path Network)
January 1, 2005... A pediatric asthma program that includes home visits by an asthma management team and an intensive educational program for families has resulted in a dramatic drop in emergency department (ED) visits for pediatric asthma patients at Hurley...

WebM&M teaches by example with case studies: site draws quality managers, safety professionals.
January 1, 2005... "One of the great challenges in the whole world of quality and patient safety is learning to take advantage of the richness of clinical cases," says Robert M. Wachter, MD, professor and associate chairman in the department of medicine at the...

Insurer refuses to pay for wrong-site/person surgery.
January 1, 2005... The movement to prevent wrong-site or wrong-person surgery got another boost recently when a major health plan announced affective Jan. 1, 2005, it will no longer pay for medical procedures involving those egregious errors. Don't expect to...

CE questions.
January 1, 2005... 1. St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City has paid thousands of dollars to send undocumented workers back to their country of origin because they didn't qualify for post-acute services and couldn't be safely discharged to home. A. true...

HMSA case managers are patient advocates, not UMs: system promotes collaboration, not competition.(Discharge Planning Advisor[R]:--the update for improving continuity of care)
January 1, 2005... Case managers with the Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), a nonprofit medical indemnity association, follow a practice model that differs significantly from that used at most other insurance companies, says Melissa Bojorquez, ACBSW,...

Team approach cuts costs for the chronically ill: efforts go beyond traditional hospital care.
January 1, 2005... A team approach and intensive case management of patients has helped San Francisco General Hospital cut the number of hospitalizations and costs for patients who were frequently hospitalized. The team's efforts go far beyond traditional...

Teaching/learning packets engender culture change: initiative involved nurses, physicians, therapists.
January 1, 2005... The team of safety and education professionals UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) in McKeesport, PA, has taken a pre-existing vehicle--teaching/learning packets--used successfully by the nursing staff and adapted it to an...