August 11, 2011
“This How-to Guide is designed to support hospital-based teams and their community partners in codesigning and reliably implementing improved care processes to ensure that patients who have been discharged from the hospital have an ideal transition to the next setting of care (such as a primary care practice, home care, or a skilled nursing facility).
The Guide includes:
- Getting Started: This section lists steps to get started on creating an ideal transition for patients being discharged from the hospital, a post-acute care setting, or a rehabilitation facility.
- Key Changes: Four key recommendations for improving the transition out of the hospital are described, including typical failures encountered, recommended measures to guide improvement, and tools and resources to help teams implement the changes.
- Testing, Implementing, and Spreading Changes: A review of fundamental improvement methods and resources for testing changes before they are implemented and spread more widely throughout the organization.
- Case Studies: The cases provide examples of how organizations implemented the key changes to improve transitions from the hospital.
- Resources and References: Worksheets and other tools to help hospital teams implement the changes, along with a bibliography of selected resources.”
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Outpatient care, Patient-centered care, Process improvement, Quality improvement | No Comments
August 9, 2011
“Hospitals are tackling a dangerous and costly side effect of emergency-room overcrowding and long wait times: the growing number of patients who get fed up and leave without treatment.
To speed patients through the system, emergency rooms are adopting so-called lean-management principles pioneered by such companies as Toyota Motor Corp. to increase efficiency, cut costs and provide better service.
That means streamlining the traditional methods of triage and reserving beds for only the sickest patients, abandoning the longstanding rule that every patient gets a bed. It also means staffing the ER with less-costly providers such as nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, so more expensive ER doctors can focus on care and not on paperwork, test ordering and discharge plans.”
Posted in Mass Media Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Emergency service, Patient-centered care, Process improvement, Wait lists | No Comments
August 5, 2011
“The North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre (NWCTC) has to deal with an increasing demand in the number of patients who require chemotherapy, with the escalating use of second line, third line, and additional treatment for many cancers. As a result, there is growing pressure on the chemotherapy unit to deliver treatment quickly, efficiently, and safely. Following guidelines from the Department of Health’s Manual for Cancer Services, we are constantly looking for ways to improve and develop the level of care provided at our center, and the process of receiving chemotherapy has been identified as an area of high risk. Therefore, a team was established to review and explore current practices at the NWCTC with the goal of implementing an improved process to minimize the risks of chemotherapy treatment.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Cancer, Patient-centered care, Quality improvement, Risk assessment, Risk management | No Comments
August 2, 2011
“Healthcare is currently experiencing a critical shift… (towards) a robust, integrated model focusing on coordination of care. This view is taken by advocates of what is called ‘accountable care.’ Accountable care can potentially change healthcare—and, in turn, change the way health information is captured, maintained, used, and shared. Current and new demands for data ensure an ongoing evolution in the required information tools needed to manage that data.
What does providing accountable care mean for health information management (HIM)? While much remains to be seen, this paper begins to answer that question by exploring:
- A summary of information about accountable care
- The impact of accountable care on the way information is managed
- Implications and considerations for those who manage health information.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care, Quality of care | No Comments
August 1, 2011
“Social media outlets are prevalent – whether this is in the form of social networking websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo or an online support forum… These social media outlets share some common characteristics, such as being wide-reaching, user-centric and collaborative in nature.
Increasingly, health professionals are integrating the way they work with social media in an attempt to provide better care for their patients as well as information sharing. Within this context, there has never been a better time to explore the possibility of using social media to facilitate health care interaction. This article will consider some key features of using social media to facilitate patient-provider interaction”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Patient-centered care, Social media | No Comments
July 26, 2011
“Understanding the perspectives and experience of community-based providers is an important input to understanding and improving the experience of individuals and their caregivers. What does integrated care mean to the range of providers who deliver home care and support services in the community? What do they think are the most important elements of integrated care, and how do their experiences stack up against them?”
“We captured frontline views from care coordinators, regulated health professionals (registered nurses, nurse practitioners, advanced practice nurses, registered practical nurses, physio and occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians, social workers, respiratory therapists, and pharmacists) and personal support workers.”
“The survey data were generally positive. Survey respondents clearly articulated that client-focused care, working well with other providers, prompt and complete information, effective communication with the client and with other providers, and timely assessment and care are highly valued. They view client involvement and client-focused care as integral to a well-coordinated system of care. Prompt information about care plans and changes to plans, having complete information from other providers, and good communication among providers were viewed as key to integration. However, analysis of the quantitative data indicates that there is a gap between community providers’ ideals and their reality.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Access to care, Patient-centered care, Quality of care, Statistics & numerical data | No Comments
July 21, 2011
Doctor’s attitudes and behaviours can have a huge impact on patient health and safety, according to new data collected by Dr. Andrew Klein, Cedars Sinai Director of Comprehensive transplant center at, and Dr. Pier Forni, founder of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project at Johns Hopkins University.
Klein and Forni accumulated data from a number of studies that look at how doctors behave towards operating room staff, nurses, and pharmacists, and came to the conclusion that doctor civility is of critical importance. In operating rooms, doctor discourtesy to staff is linked to higher incidences of post-operative complications and even mortality rates. In hospital pharmacies, pharmacists won’t ask a doctor that they perceive to be “mean” for clarification regarding prescriptions, which can have serious impact on patients well-being.
While doctors themselves obviously are responsible for their own behaviour, the root of the problem lies in medical culture itself. According to Klein this problem is cyclical, as rude doctors bully their students which “essentially train(s) the next generation of surgeons to be bullies.”
READ wants to know: how does your organization encourage doctors to maintain a professional and pleasant manner with others? What challenges do you face in the process?
Posted in Mass Media Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Mortality rates, Patient-centered care, Safety | No Comments
July 14, 2011
“In response to growing interest from the hospital community in better understanding and improving the experience of patients and their families during hospitalization, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) conducted an in-depth review of the research, studied exemplar organizations, and interviewed experts in the field. Our aim was to identify the primary and secondary drivers of exceptional patient and family inpatient hospital experience (defined as care that is patient centered, safe, effective, timely, efficient, and equitable), as measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey’s “willingness to recommend” the hospital.
The project identified five primary drivers of exceptional patient and family inpatient hospital experience of care: leadership; staff hearts and minds; respectful partnership; reliable care; and evidence-based care.
To help hospitals make sense of the many aspects of improving the patient and family experience, this white paper includes:
- A list of primary and secondary drivers that, taken together, will result in achieving the overall aim;
- Exemplars from a variety of hospitals to help translate concept into action;
- Tips on how to get started; and
- Extensive references and a bibliography to provide further evidence, guidance, and applied examples.
Hospitals can use this framework to design their efforts to improve the patient and family experience — testing and implementing changes, weaving them into the fabric of daily work for everyone, and achieving outstanding results.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care, Quality of care | No Comments
June 24, 2011
The number one cause of injury and death within a hospital setting is medical errors. This is despite the fact that patient-safety is a priority for healthcare executives and planners. Health safety experts offer the following tips as a means of countering the risk of medical errors:
- Create a hospital culture that focuses on patient safety. This includes promoting a safety-orientation to everyone from top-level executives to the day-to-day staff;
- Create a coalition of healthcare organizations to collate data on their best practices and successful safety initiatives and share with other organizations;
- Develop standards for care delivery. This includes simple initiatives such as using checklists and more comprehensive initiatives like teaching staff about evidence-based practices;
- Use established tools that help reduce harm.
While theoretically the creation of a safety oriented healthcare organization should be simple, in reality it requires constant efforts by all participants to ensure that patients receive the best care.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Evidence-based, Hospital administration, Patient-centered care, Safety | No Comments
June 6, 2011
“Partnering to Heal is a computer-based, video-simulation training program on infection control practices for clinicians, health professional students, and patient advocates.
The training highlights effective communication about infection control practices and ideas for creating a “culture of safety” in healthcare institutions to keep patients from getting sicker. Users assume the identity of the following five main characters and make decisions about preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs):
- A Physician, Nathan Green, Director of a Hospital Post-op Unit, ready to start new prevention efforts in the unit;
- A Registered Nurse, Dena Gray, working to learn effective communications skills that could make the difference for her patients;
- An Infection Preventionist, Janice Upshaw, a new employee charged with using a team-based approach to reducing infections;
- A Patient Family Member, Kelly McTavish, whose father was just admitted to the hospital;
- A third-year Medical Student, Manuel Hernandez, who wants to gain confidence to make a difference for his patients.”
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Health technology, Infection control, Information technology, Patient-centered care, Prevention and control, Safety | No Comments
