HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement articles from July 2005

HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement archives from July 2005

Medicare P4P demonstration project shows significant QI; participants improve in all five clinical areas over three-year period.
July 1, 2005... Quality of care has improved significantly in hospitals participating in a groundbreaking Medicare pay-for-performance demonstration project, according to preliminary from more than 270 participating hospitals on their experience during the...

For this hospital, money is secondary.(Memorial Health System in Springfield, IL)
July 1, 2005... Memorial Health System in Springfield, IL, one of the participants in the CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)/Premier Hospital Quality Incentive (HQI) Demonstration Project, certainly will not be disappointed when it receives the...

Premier cites key lessons of project.(best practices in top hospitals)
July 1, 2005... Premier has conducted site visits with top performing hospitals to document best practices and share them with other participants and the rest of the health care industry. These site visits have revealed that the improvements necessary to...

Culture change is critical part in improved outcomes; underscores opportunities for improvement.
July 1, 2005... Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, has made significant improvement in its clinical outcomes through benchmark utilization. For example, it has been able to reduce infections by 55% in post-op ventricular peritoneal (VP)...

Small hospital makes big strides in safety; Solucient includes smaller facilities among Performance Improvement Leaders.
July 1, 2005... Larger hospitals may have the edge when it comes to budget and staff size, but smaller facilities can make just as big an impact when it comes to fostering patient safety. This health care reality was underscored recently when Solucient, LLC,...

Sudden jump in VAP spurs QI to cut rate to near zero; new mouth care processes at heart of solution.(ventilator-assisted pneumonia)
July 1, 2005... Sometimes, as a quality manager, you can be proceeding with the confident assurance that you "are doing everything right" when it comes to a cohort of patients, when suddenly your data give you an uncomfortable wake-up call. That's precisely...

Education earns high comparative AMI rankings; improvement spurred by desire to 'be the best'.(Providence Hospital in Southfield MI)
July 1, 2005... For some quality teams, being good is just not good enough. That was certainly the case at Providence Hospital, part of the St. John Health System in Southfield, MI. "We were always good, but we wanted to be the best," recalls Shukri...

NQF endorses HCAHPS patient perception survey; results will be 'public and comparable'.(National Quality Forum and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Plans)
July 1, 2005... The National Quality Forum (NQF), a private, not-for-profit, public benefit corporation in Washington, DC, established in 1999 to standardize health care quality measurement and reporting, has endorsed HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of...

JCAHO releases its 2006 safety goals.(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' National Patient Safety Goals)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has published the 2006 National Patient Safety Goals and related requirements for each of its accreditation programs and Disease-Specific Care certification program. The...

JCAHO revisits emergency management standard.
July 1, 2005... The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) is asking health care organizations for feedback to its proposed revisions to its emergency management planning standard. The revisions would require organizations to...