Tag: Quality

CMS penalizes 2,545 hospitals for high readmissions

Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will penalize and reduce a year’s worth of payments to nearly half of the nation’s hospitals because of 30-day readmission rates, the November 2 Kaiser Health News reports. The penalties are part of the ninth year of the Hospital Readmissions…

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By: Judy Mathias
November 3, 2020
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Think 'outside the blocks' to shore up balance sheets

Editor’s Note: This article from Whitman Partners addresses some ways OR nurse leaders can help their health systems recover from the financial fallout and disruption in normal processes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitman Partners is a Portland, Oregon-based specialty search firm dedicated to placing directors of surgical services at…

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By: Carisa Brewster
October 21, 2020
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Consider a PSH as a post-pandemic strategy

Across the US, surgical services are estimated to comprise around 20% of national health spending and typically generate up to 70% of total health system revenue.1, 2 That makes surgical services the largest revenue generator for a hospital, supporting access to numerous other healthcare services. Considering the average hospital has…

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By: Barbara McClenathan, MBA-HCM, BSN, RN, CNOR and Lisa Branding, MHSA
October 21, 2020
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Incentive payments push staff to reach productivity goals

Any process improvement project is far more likely to succeed with backing from leadership. The familiar phrase, “the buck stops here,” reflects a mindset that applies to OR managers who take ownership of what happens to their patients and their staffs every day. But what if they could say, “the…

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By: Elizabeth Wood
October 21, 2020
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CMS halts COVID-19 testing in non-CLIA-certified labs

Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on October 9 announced that it is taking action to stop labs that are testing for COVID-19 without proper Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments (CLIA) certification. The agency has issued 171 cease-and-desist letters to US facilities that were testing for COVID-19…

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By: Judy Mathias
October 13, 2020
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COVID-19-related delays for CRC screening causing 11.9% increase in mortality

Editor's Note New research presented October 12 at UEG [United European Gastroenterology] Week Virtual 2020 shows that delays in colorectal cancer (CRC) screening caused by COVID-19 has resulted in significantly increased mortality rates. Researchers at the University of Bologna, Italy, developed a model to forecast the impact of delayed CRC…

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By: Judy Mathias
October 12, 2020
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AI, robots to transform hospitals' resilience to COVID-19, future disasters

Editor's Note Leandro Pecchia, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, has been awarded £13 million (nearly $17 million) for the ODIN project. The project will explore the use of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) to ease pressures on hospitals during recovery from COVID-19…

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By: Judy Mathias
October 12, 2020
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Elective cancer surgery in COVID-19-free surgical pathways

Editor's Note This international, multicenter study finds that dedicated COVID-19-free surgical pathways should be established to provide safe elective cancer surgery during the pandemic. Researchers from more than 130 countries examined data on 9,171 patients in 55 countries from the start of the pandemic to the middle of April 2020.…

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By: Judy Mathias
October 8, 2020
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Restoring filtration efficiency after decontamination of used N95 masks

Editor's Note In this study, researchers from India’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Israel’s Technion-IIT discover how to recharge used N95 masks after decontamination to recover their 95% efficiency. Also included is a proof-of-concept construction of a battery-operated smart mask. N95 masks are 95% efficient at filtering out 0.3…

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By: Judy Mathias
September 14, 2020
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Hospitals, nursing homes ignore guidelines to separate COVID-19 from other patients

Editor's Note Dozens of nursing homes and hospitals ignored official guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to separate COVID-19 patients from those without the virus, the September 10 Kaiser Health News reports. A Kaiser Health News investigation found that nursing homes and hospitals ignored (CDC) guidelines…

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By: Judy Mathias
September 10, 2020
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