Hospice Management Advisor articles from August 2008

Hospice Management Advisor archives from August 2008

Medicare proposal to reduce hospice wage index equals rate cut.
August 1, 2008... Medicare proposal to reduce hospice wage index equals rate cut More than 80% of counties see decrease in the first year The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) doesn't call it a rate cut. However, the net result of the...

Average reductions will vary from state to state.
August 1, 2008... Average reductions will vary from state to state Know how your county will be affected beforehand Although the proposed wage index reductions by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will vary from county to county and...

CMS rule doesn't address factors such as salary.
August 1, 2008... CMS rule doesn't address factors such as salary Competition for nurses not reflected Hospice managers and staff members have become accustomed to looking for ways to streamline services and lower costs, but the proposed three-year...

What if your laptops quit talking to your server?
August 1, 2008... What if your laptops quit talking to your server? Flexibility solves the unexpected The 22 laptops were working fine. Data were being entered, nurses were visiting patients, and everyone was thrilled with the newly installed electronic...

Plan carefully for data recovery.
August 1, 2008... Plan carefully for data recovery Know what info you need, how to re-enter it When the hospice nurses' laptops at the St. John Home Health and Hospice in Tulsa, OK, stopped synchronizing with the agency's server, agency management and...

Emergency IT plan must be well designed.(information technology )
August 1, 2008... Emergency IT plan must be well designed Build plan over time with small steps Your information technology emergency plan needs to address the types of problems you are most likely to encounter, says Rajesh Shetye, MS, MBA, executive...

Truth-telling and hope not mutually exclusive.
August 1, 2008... Truth-telling and hope not mutually exclusive "At what price is cure a goal? And what price does hope carry?" Lindsay E. Rockwell, MD, a Northampton, MA, oncologist, wrote in a Journal of the American Medical Association article..sup.1 ...

Truth, gently told, need not end hope.
August 1, 2008... Truth, gently told, need not end hope Patient care providers should take care to let patients express what their hopes are and to reframe those hopes, gently, with truth, says Vincent Guss Jr., MDiv, chaplain at Falcons Landing Air Force...

End of life is a 'feeling world'.
August 1, 2008... End of life is a 'feeling world' For physicians to explain to patients that there are alternatives at the end of life that can be more valuable than chemotherapy, they first must believe it themselves, says Larry Cripe, MD, an oncologist...

Education, best practices cut catheter infection rates.
August 1, 2008... Education, best practices cut catheter infection rates The number of bladder catheter infections per 1,000 device days reported by participants in the Infection Surveillance Project of the Missouri Alliance for Home Care (MAHC) dropped from...

Symptoms can be patient-specific.
August 1, 2008... Symptoms can be patient-specific Patient and family education about the care of an indwelling catheter is critical, says Gayle Lovato, RN, MS, infection control practitioner at Inova Loudoun Hospital in Leesburg, VA, and a member of the...

How many 'sacred cows' still are in your pasture?
August 1, 2008... How many 'sacred cows' still are in your pasture? Regular catheter changes is not a best practice Participants in the Infection Surveillance Project of the Missouri Alliance for Home Care (MAHC) see their bladder catheter infection...

Baby boomers might not have specialists they need.
August 1, 2008... Baby boomers might not have specialists they need When 78 million baby boomers reach age 65 in 2011, they will depend upon a health care work force that is too small and unprepared to meet their needs, according to a report from the...