There are certain requirements and regulatory factors that pose perpetual challenges for hospitals, familiar burdens that elicit nods of understanding and sympathy when organizations discuss the barriers to successfully keeping themselves in compliance. The recently relaxed "30-...
Event reporting varies widely from facility to facility, and the kind of medical record system a facility uses (paper or electronic) can have a dramatic effect on its data collection and what can be done with that work. So when Jennifer Trallo, RN, MSN, MBA, director of quality...
Medicare recently amplified its effort to improve healthcare quality and reduce costs by naming 89 new accountable care organizations (ACO). The ACO experiment-built upon increased care coordination, outcome-based incentives, and movement away from fee-for-service reimbursement-began...
In 2009, The Joint Commission added Leadership standard LD.03.01.01, "Leaders create and maintain a culture of safety and quality throughout the hospital," to recognize that behavior that intimidates others and affects staff morale and turnover can also be damaging to patient care, and to...
Ever since it was first introduced to The Joint Commission's Medical Staff standards in 2007, the concept of focused professional practice evaluation (FPPE) has been something of a bugbear for hospitals. In theory, this sort of quality analysis and review makes perfect sense,...
Most infection control (IC) professionals can recite their No. 1 goal in their sleep: zero infections. Others also dream of 100% compliance with central line bundles, isolation precautions, and hand hygiene. The key for Joint Commission standard IC.01.04.01 is to prioritize...
In 2008, CMS published a ruling to stop reimbursing hospitals for certain healthcare-associated infections (HAI), including catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI). Four years later, that decision has made...
It was a simple mistake she's still ashamed she made, but luckily when Elizabeth Butler, BA, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Massachusetts, took the stitches out of the wrong woman, the patient was not severely injured. Although Butler has followed up with the...