Uncategorized Editor's Note Including a health information exchange query into emergency department patient care could significantly reduce the number of tests ordered and reduce costs, finds this study. Efficient health information exchange was associated with a 52% reduction in lab tests and a 36% reduction in radiology exams per patient ordered…
Editor's Note Though a nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty recently to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company, the payments were not listed in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Open Payments Database. That’s because companies are not required under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act to publicly…
Editor's Note In less than 3 months, healthcare providers will switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding for medical diagnoses and inpatient hospital procedures. To help providers get ready for the October 1 deadline, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is releasing additional guidance that will allow for flexibility in…
Editor's Note Aetna Inc has agreed to buy rival health insurer Humana Inc for $37 billion in cash and stock, creating the second-largest provider of health insurance in the US. The Affordable Care Act has spurred mergers by introducing rules that push insurers to look for savings. Humana’s 3.2 million Medicare…
Editor's Note The American College of Surgeons has launched a new web tool to help surgeons navigate and succeed in Medicare’s mandatory quality programs: Physician Quality Reporting System, Electronic Health Record-Meaningful Use, and Value-Based Modifier. Surgeons who do not successfully participate in these programs in 2015 could face up to…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on July 1 issued a proposed rule for CY 2016 for the hospital outpatient prospective payment (OPPS) and ambulatory surgical center (ASC) payment systems. CMS proposes an OPPS decrease of .01%. The change is based on a projected hospital market basket increase…
Our Take In this study, functional capacity to perform activities of daily living was an independent predictor of postoperative mortality within each ASA class, indicating that it should be incorporated into routine preoperative evaluations. The likelihood for mortality was significantly lower for patients who were functionally independent than for those…
Patients who are readmitted after major surgical procedures have improved survival if they return to the same hospital where their surgery took place, finds a study. Readmission to the index hospital was associated with a 26% lower 90-day mortality risk than readmission to a non-index hospital. These findings may have…
Background: In an effort to measure and improve the quality of perioperative care, the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) was introduced in 2003. Methods: The authors retrospectively analyzed the electronic medical record data from 45,304 inpatients at a single institution to assess whether compliance with SCIP Inf-10 (body temperature management)…
As the anesthesiologist places the mask on the little girl’s face, the circulating nurse snaps a photograph and sends it to her parents’ cell phone with a caption saying, “she is safely off to sleep.” The nurse continues to send photographs and videos of the girl’s heart procedure along with…
