The largest sepsis study every conducted with Medicare data found a 40% increase in the rate of Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with the deadly infection from 2012 to 2018.
CMS announced it is combining the interpretive guidelines that its surveyors use for psychiatric hospitals into the main Appendix A for hospitals, eliminating the need for double survey visits.
CMS is revising its State Operations Manual (SOM) for hospitals in one of the first significant overhauls in more than a year. But be aware that the changes are not fully online yet and more revisions are to come.
As of January 1, CMS eliminated the paper version of the form to report patient deaths associated with restraint or seclusion. Form CMS-10455 must now be filed through an electronic version.
The study found that the CMS rating system does not account for social risk factors (SRF) and as a result, provider organizations could be judged on “social factors outside of their control.”
The following is a Q&A with two experts at Chicago-based Lumere, a healthcare think tank focused on helping health systems eliminate medical errors and cut unnecessary costs.
