A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that between 2003 and 2012, the number of hospitals hiring physicians jumped up by 13%. Despite this, the authors caution that the glut in physicians will have little impact on care quality.
Between 2010 and 2015, hospital readmission rates have dropped an average of 8% nationally, with 100,000 unnecessary patient readmissions avoided in 2015 alone.
A proposed CMS change to the 2017 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule will require surgeons document and report data every 10 minutes for new billing codes (G-codes). The penalty for not submitting this data is 5% of a facility’s Medicare reimbursement.
CMS announced on September 8 that it had finalized new emergency response requirements for healthcare providers participating in the Medicare or Medicaid system.The new rules go into effect on November 8, 2016 and must be implemented by November 15, 2017.
The Mayo Clinic experienced a highly publicized case of drug diversion back in 2008, where a nurse was caught stealing fentanyl from patients about to have a catheter inserted. The incident prompted the Mayo Clinic to take proactive steps toward drug diversion.
John Hopkins researchers looked at three years and 4,500 acute-care facilities worth of readmission and mortality data, finding that hospitals with high readmission rates tended to have lower mortality rates as well.
was denied full Joint Commission accreditation, in part due to its handling of fire drills. The Joint Commission has released a new fire drill matrix for facilities to forestall confusion on survey day.
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 9
Keeping a hospital compliant and survey ready is a difficult, endless, and often frustrating task. One of the difficulties can be impressing the importance of accreditation to those who aren't immersed in it on a daily basis. As such, it can help to remember what the...
