Berwick Advances The Quality Cause
The Los Angeles Times reports that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Donald Berwick is pressing for health care quality improvements and innovations.
Los Angeles Times: Pressing For Better Quality Across Health Care
The cardiac intensive care unit at Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta gleams and hums with a dazzling array of scientific wonders that breathe for tiny lungs and monitor every beat of an infant heart. But on a recent visit, Dr. Donald Berwick was especially pleased by something decidedly low-tech: a quiet zone where nurses can place medication orders without being interrupted, even during emergencies (Levey, 10/4).
In related news, a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association leader offers a plan to improve health care quality and costs.
Modern Healthcare: Blues Urges Gov't to Learn From Private Sector
In unveiling a proposal to improve health care quality and lower costs, the leader of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association said the federal government should extract what works in the private sector and then communicate that message broadly and quickly… The Blues proposal — Building Tomorrow's Healthcare System: The Pathway to High-Quality, Affordable Care in America — offers 20 recommendations to the federal government in four areas: reward safety; do what works; reinforce front-line care; and inspire healthy living. It also includes a host of examples of existing Blues programs in those four areas (Zigmond, 10/4).