Retooling Hospitals, One Data Point At A Time
The University of Utah improved quality and reduced costs by tracking each patient’s care.
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The University of Utah improved quality and reduced costs by tracking each patient’s care.
Patients in rural hospitals often have to wait days to see a psychiatrist. South Carolina is a leader in turning that around.
KHN’s consumer columnist says a 90-day delay is allowed by the health law, but employees have other options to get through that time.
Dr. Al Sommer, the former dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who helped produce a new report on climate change, says changes expected this century could lead to many deaths and a strain on hospitals.
Manufacturers of the essential fluid say they won’t be able to catch up with demand until next year.
Caregivers blame Pennsylvania’s decision not to expand Medicaid, as well as the continued stigma of seeking such care.
County health officials are scrambling to set up immunization clinics for thousands after 341 cases in Ohio have swept through the Amish communities in the central part of the state.
That state has defined autism behavioral therapy as a type of medical benefit not subject to the mental health parity law, a move that allows insurers more latitude to limit the benefits they offer.
Hospitals and drug makers are waging a pitched battle over the program — known as 340B — that requires drug manufacturers to give steep discounts to hospitals that treat a large percentage of poor patients.
Critics argue that some facilities using the program should not be eligible and that the money they receive from the sale of the discounted drugs is not always being plowed back into patient care.
The 1 percent cut in payments is the latest effort by the federal government to improve hospital care.
Out of all 761 hospitals that are in line to be penalized for high rates of infections and complications this fall, 175 of them are most likely to be penalized because their preliminary scores are nine or above on a scale of 1 to 10.
Before assessing penalties, Medicare assesses rates of infection among patients with catheters in major veins and in the bladder and eight other patient injuries, such as blood clots, bed sores and accidental falls.