Hospital Peer Review articles from April 2002

Hospital Peer Review archives from April 2002

Hospital slashes pneumonia rate with quality project for early intervention: project helps identify at-risk patients, methods to prevent infection.
April 1, 2002... When nosocomial pneumonia rates started going through the roof at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, the quality improvement leaders knew it was time to break out the big tools and find a solution. After soliciting ideas from a...

What you need to know before hiring a surveyor: surveyors as consultants OK, but watch the rules.
April 1, 2002... Hiring consultants to help you interpret Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards and get your program in shape before a survey is a common practice, and some quality professionals go a step further by hiring an...

Model business associate agreements will save work: agreement should be ready well before deadline. (Reader Question).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Question: A while back, we heard that covered entities under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that were accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations would need to come up with a...

Discharge process enables faster placement: report quality greatly enhanced. (Reader Question).
April 1, 2002... Case managers at New York Hospital of Queens in Flushing are using a new software tool to determine the availability of post-acute services, then request and schedule those services over the Internet, says Caroline Keane, RN, MSN, ANP, CCM,...

To smooth discharge, check bed `life cycle': defining terms spurs solution, physician says. (Discharge Planning Advisor).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Hospitals with ongoing bed management problems and high censuses would do well to look more closely to determine the true cause, suggests John Whitcomb, MD, medical director of emergency services for Milwaukee's St. Luke's Medical Center, which...

JCAHO releases program for disease-specific care: certification program is first of its kind. (Reader Question).(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has released its Disease-Specific Care (DSC) program, which it calls a "groundbreaking" development. The program is the first of its kind in the country to certify...

Teleconferences help educate on bioterrorism: AHRQ report: equal to classroom training. (Reader Question).(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
April 1, 2002... Teleconferences are an effective way to train large numbers of physicians, nurses, and other clinicians and to standardize bioterrorism preparedness training across geographically diverse groups, according to a new report sponsored by the...

Task force continues to identify needless rules. (Reader Question).(Standards Review Task Force)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... The Standards Review Task Force is making progress in its effort to find redundant and needlessly burdensome rules in Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards. At its most recent meeting, the group reviewed the...

Assess carefully before starting training programs: focus education on root causes, not symptoms.
April 1, 2002... Monitoring of incident reports suggests that caregivers are not performing up to your patient safety expectations. People seem to make many of the same types of mistakes over and over again. Cautionary memos and discussions in staff meetings...

CE questions.
April 1, 2002... Please save your monthly issues with the CE questions in order to take the two semester tests in the June and December issues. A Scantron sheet will be inserted in those issues, but the questions will not be repeated. 13. List the...

Hospital Peer Review Reader survey.
April 1, 2002... In an effort to learn more about the professionals who read HPR, we are conducting this reader survey. The results will be used to enhance the content and format of HPR. Instructions: Mark the appropriate answers by circling your...

Building a bridge over the abyss: will bioterrorism help bring disjointed health system together? Getting in same boat as `tsunami' of money builds.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Diverse and disjointed, the nation's public health and clinical settings have education needs and communication gaps that must be bridged if the system is to improve its response to bioterrorism, a group of consultants recently told the...

CDC gets plenty of advice for action: clarify roles, make info user-friendly.(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... A recent consultants' brainstorming session on education and communication needs for bioterrorism resulted in numerous suggestions to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Some of the points of information and...

Was anthrax mailer a bioweapons researcher? `This has military lab stamped all over it'.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Given the difficulty of creating high-quality anthrax in a civilian research lab, the original source of the Bacillus anthracis that killed five people last year was likely a U.S. bioweapons facility, the president of the American Society of...

Bioterrorism forensics: the burden of proof: if bug does not fit, you must acquit?(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Already asked by federal investigators to assist in finding the anthrax mailer, the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) is taking the next step and discussing the emerging science of bioterrorism forensics. Despite an impressive array of...

Early results of Leapfrog hospital survey promising: nearly half of institutions contacted provided replies.(Leapfrog Group)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... In mid-2001, a total of 525 hospitals in six regions around the country were invited to complete a web-based patient survey by the Business Roundtable's The Leapfrog Group in Washington, DC. Now, the first returns are in, and The Leapfrog...

Putting safety principles into practice: incentivizing safety efforts.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... When it comes to safety, theory is nice but results are better. Two panelists at the Leapfrog Group press briefing reported how they have given teeth to safety principles with transformative initiatives. Michael A. Stocker, MD, MPH, CEO of...

Safety tool stresses education and action: tragedy transforms facility into industry model.
April 1, 2002... Two tragic medication errors seven years ago prompted Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston to undertake what CEO Jim Conway calls "a journey of change." That journey has led to industrywide praise and recognition, including the recent...