Editor's Note The Joint Commission on November 7 released its 2016 Annual Report: “America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality and Safety.” The report, which includes information on how more than 3,300 accredited hospitals performed on measures of patient care in 2015, showed that hospital performance continued to improve, greatly enhancing quality of…

Read More

Editor's Note For older hip fracture patients, the care they received at a postacute care facility had a three to eight times greater impact on their long-term recovery than the care they received at the hospital, this study finds. Nursing home factors explained three times more variation in the odds…

Read More

Editor's Note The first national quality improvement (QI) program for bariatric surgery reduced readmissions by more than 30% for some hospitals, finds this study presented November 2 at ObesityWeek 2016, the annual conference of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS). The average hospital saw 30-day readmissions drop…

Read More

Editor's Note More than 1,600 hospitals will get Medicare bonuses in 2017 under the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program, which is about 200 fewer than last year, the November 2 Modern Healthcare reports. The results are concerning because fewer hospitals are getting bonuses and hospitals aren’t moving in the rankings,…

Read More

Editor's Note The Leapfrog Group on October 31 released it’s biannual hospital safety report card. Of 2,812 facilities graded, 844 received an A grade, 658 received a B, 954 received a C, 157 received a D, and 20 received an F. According to Leapfrog, the measures used by Leapfrog, Medicare,…

Read More

Editor's Note The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) on October 28 recognized 60 of 603 participating hospitals for achieving meritorious outcomes in surgical patient care in 2015. The recognition program commends a select group of hospitals for achieving a meritorious composite score that is…

Read More

Editor's Note Total knee patients in enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) programs have less pain and recuperate faster, finds this study presented October 23 at the Anesthesiology 2016 annual meeting. The study, from Rush University Medical Center (Chicago), included 243 total knee patients, who were provided a combination of postoperative…

Read More

Editor's Note In an October 13 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) called for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to set priorities in its effort to better align healthcare quality measures across payers and programs, and to make them truly meaningful, according to the October 14 FierceHealthcare.…

Read More

Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on October 14 issued a final rule with comment period for implementing provisions of the new physician payment system required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), according to the October 14 Modern Healthcare. The rule…

Read More

Editor's Note At 10 years, prostate cancer mortality was low irrespective of the treatment and with no significant difference among treatments, this study finds. Treatments included active monitoring (1.5 deaths/1,000 person years), radical prostatectomy (0.9 deaths/1,000 person years), and external-beam radiotherapy (0.7 deaths/1,000 person years). Surgery and radiotherapy were associated…

Read More