Editor's Note Care coordination strategies were found to be associated with high overall hospital quality star ratings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in this study. A total of 710 general acute care noncritical access hospitals that received star ratings and responded to the 2015 American Hospital…

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Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) have increasing incentives to offer total joint replacements (TJR) as Medicare expands the list of covered procedures. However, there’s a lot to consider in this particular service line. “There are many things to arrange that aren’t required with other service lines, particularly as home care of…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on November 1 released its final payment rule for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs). CMS added eight codes to the ASC-payable list, including total knee arthroplasty. CMS also removed total hip arthroplasty and seven spine codes from…

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Editor's Note This study finds that the estimated cost of waste in the US health care system ranges from $760 billion to $935 billion and accounts for some 25% of healthcare spending. Projected potential savings from interventions to reduce waste, excluding savings from administrative complexity, range from $191 billion to…

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Editor's Note Social risk factors were inconsistently associated with surgical site infection (SSI) rates after colectomy or abdominal hysterectomy in this study. In this analysis of 149,741 patients, Medicaid status (a marker for poverty) and living in a low-income zip code were linked to higher SSI rates after colectomy. For…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on September 26 released a final rule that revises discharge planning requirements for hospitals, the September 26 Becker’s Clinical Leadership & Infection Control reports. Among the requirements: Hospitals must prioritize patients’ care goals and treatment preferences during discharge planning. Hospitals…

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Editor's Note In a proposed rule, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is considering whether to reimburse for percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) at ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), the September 20 tctMD reports. As of May 1, 2019, approximately 22 states allowed for coronary interventions to be done outside…

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Editor's Note Strong evidence suggests that most declines in excess readmissions--after implementation of Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP)--at poorly performing hospitals can be explained by a statistical phenomenon called “regression to the mean [RTM],” this study finds. In RTM, entities farther away from the mean in one period are…

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Editor's Note There are gender differences in how physicians perceive EHR-related stress, satisfaction, and usability, finds this study. Of 25 ICU physicians who participated in the study, 48% were men and 52% were women. Overall task performance scores were similar, but men reported significantly higher perceived EHR workload stress and…

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Editor's Note In this study of more than 1 million Medicare patients, 4.8% were super-users of healthcare and incurred 31.7% of Medicare expenditures after surgery. A machine learning approach identified the following as the most significant risk factors linked to super-utilization of healthcare in the year following surgery: hemiplegia/paraplegia weight…

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