May 31, 2011
This article from Healthcare Quarterly reviews the Saskatchewan’s Health Quality Council (HQC) Accelerating Excellence initiative. The initiative, launched in 2008, was designed to help the HQC refresh and renew its approach to healthcare delivery. While the process is still underway, the Accelerating Excellence program has shifted the focus of the HQC from the mechanics of care delivery to the needs and comfort of the patient. The initiative is trying to erase long waiting times, reduce doctor form-completion error, implement strong leadership, set measurable goals, and more. The HQC example serves as a learning template for other provinces wishing to revamp their approach to quality healthcare delivery.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Canada, Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care, Quality improvement, Quality of care | No Comments
May 20, 2011
“Health care organizations use Safety Briefings to help increase staff awareness of patient safety issues, create an environment in which staff share information without fear of reprisal, and integrate the reporting of medication safety issues into daily work. Over time, Safety Briefings help organizations create a culture of safety, reduce the risk of medication errors, and improve quality of care. The tool includes step-by-step instructions for conducting Safety Briefings, a data collection form, and a pre- and post-survey to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool.”
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Patient-centered care, Safety | No Comments
May 12, 2011
‘Gilbert Hospital, noted for its “Door to Doc in 31 Minutes” slogan, now allows en route registration via a call-ahead phone line. With the new program, which started in March, patients on their way to the hospital can call the toll-free VIP (Very Important Patient) line to provide basic registration information, saving precious seconds once they arrive.’
‘”It’s just speed and convenience for the patient,” said Tim Johns, an emergency-department physician and a Gilbert Hospital founder and medical director. “We get to focus on their medical needs instead of asking, ‘What was your phone number again?’ It’s another way to make the point that we don’t make people wait.”‘
Read how the process works at http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2011/05/06/20110506gilbert-hospital-speeds-registration-process-vip-line.html.
Posted in Mass Media Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Patient-centered care, Process improvement | No Comments
April 27, 2011
Four case studies document the progress achieved in the past five years by health care organizations that were early leaders in patient safety improvement. Their experience reflects an expansion of interventions from individual hospital units to whole facilities and delivery systems, including new settings such as home health care. Approaches include developing practical methods for training, coaching, and motivating staff to engage in patient safety work; designing effective tools and systems to minimize error and maximize learning; and leading change by setting ambitious goals, measuring and holding units accountable for performance, and sharing stories to convey values. Results include advancements in safety practices, reductions in serious events of patient harm, improved organizational safety climate and morale, and declines in malpractice claims. Keeping the commitment to patient safety has required sustained focus on making safety a core organizational value, a willingness to innovate and adapt, and perseverance in pursuing goals.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Patient-centered care, Quality control, Risk assessment, Safety | No Comments
April 21, 2011
“The report by van Walraven and colleagues on patient follow-up after an incidental finding of abdominal aortic aneuyrsm (AAA)—published today in Open Medicine—highlights an important conundrum in patient care: Who is responsible for monitoring and acting on test results when care is shared among different providers? Although it may seem convenient to place that accountability with the ordering physician or the patient’s family doctor, there are many points at which this approach can lead to ineffective and inadequate management. We suggest that one way to solve this problem might be to communicate test results directly to patients.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Efficiency, Integrated care, Patient-centered care | No Comments
April 20, 2011
ABSTRACT: Patient satisfaction is receiving greater attention as a result of the rise in pay- for-performance (P4P) and the public release of data from the Hospital Consumer Assess- ment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. This paper examines the rela- tionship between nursing and patient satisfaction across 430 hospitals. The nurse work en- vironment was significantly related to all HCAHPS patient satisfaction measures. Additionally, patient-to-nurse workloads were significantly associated with patients’ ratings and recommendation of the hospital to others, and with their satisfaction with the receipt of discharge information. Improving nurses’ work environments, including nurse staffing, may improve the patient experience and quality of care.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Nurses, Nursing, Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care, Quality of care | 1 Comment
April 14, 2011
“Workforce shortages, late referrals, and palliative care program resource constraints present significant barriers to meeting the needs of hospitalized patients facing serious illnesses. The Center to Advance Palliative Care convened a consensus panel to select criteria by which patients at high risk for unmet palliative care needs can be identified in advance for a palliative care screening assessment. The consensus panel developed primary and secondary criteria for two checklists—one to use for screening at the time of admission and one for daily patient rounds. The consensus panel believes that by implementing a checklist approach to screening patients for unmet palliative care needs, combined with educational initiatives and other system-change work, hospital staff engaged in day-to-day patient care can identify a majority of such needs, reserving specialty palliative care services for more complex problems.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Hospice care, Palliative care, Patient-centered care, Quality of care | No Comments
April 12, 2011
A hospital that slashes costs—and delivers high-quality care as it innovates? Yes, it exists.
Walk into most hospitals, and you’ll see patients scattered about the halls on gurneys or wheelchairs. They’re waiting to be moved from intensive care to a standard ward, or to an X-ray room, or to physical therapy. Each journey adds to the patient’s discomfort and increases the risk of infections and other complications. Tally up a single patient’s migrations over 24 hours, and they may consume as much as half a day of staff time.
Walk into Providence Regional Medical Center, in Everett, Wash., and you will see a hospital trying something different: It brings the equipment to the patient. In 2003, Providence opened one of the few “single stay” wards in the nation. After heart surgery, cardiac patients remain in one room throughout their recovery; only the gear and staff are in motion. As the patient’s condition stabilizes, the beeping machines of intensive care are removed and physical therapy equipment is added. Testing gear is wheeled to the patient, not the other way around. Patient satisfaction with the “single stay” ward has soared, and the average length of a hospital stay has dropped by a day or more.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Efficiency, Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care, Quality improvement, Quality of care, Safety | No Comments
March 30, 2011
“Healthy People has evolved during the three decades in which it has existed. In 1990, Healthy People 2000 had two overarching goals, 15 topic areas, and 226 objectives. Today Healthy People 2020 has four overarching goals, 42 topics areas (of which 39 contain objectives), and nearly 600 objectives. The mission of Healthy People 2020 is to:
- Identify nationwide health improvement priorities;
- Increase public awareness and understanding of determinants of health, disease,
disability, and opportunities for progress;
- Provide measureable objectives and goals applicable at national, state, and local levels;
- Engage multiple sectors to take actions to strengthen policies and improve practices that
are driven by the best available evidence and knowledge;
- and Identify critical research evaluation and data collection needs.
The following are the overarching goals of Healthy People 2020:
- Attain high-quality, longer lives free of preventable disease.
- Achieve health equity; eliminate disparities.
- Create social and physical environments that promote good health.
- Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across life stages.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Access to care, Forecasting, Indicators, Patient-centered care | No Comments
March 25, 2011
“A federal report last fall showed that some 180,000 patients die every year from adverse events in hospitals. Alarmingly, the report, Adverse Events in Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Beneficiaries, by the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, also showed that 44 percent of events that harm patients were clearly or probably preventable. Adverse events cost Medicare an estimated $324 million in October 2008, and the most common adverse events were related to medication, patient care, surgery, and infections, the report showed.
Researchers at the Center for Evidence-Based Practice at the University of Pennsylvania reported in February that as many as 70 percent of health-care-acquired infections that occur during a hospitalization, and are not present prior to hospital admission, may be preventable if providers implement evidence-based strategies.
Such strategies could save 23,500 to 44,000 lives annually, according to the study by Craig A. Umscheid, MD, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology and director of the university’s Center for Evidence-Based Practice. In addition, using these strategies could save $3.4 billion to $23.5 billion annually, the researchers reported in the February issue of the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Efficiency, Evidence-based, Patient-centered care, Quality improvement | No Comments
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