HealthGrades Names Top Cities for Hospital Care Comments Off
Study By HealthGrades
HealthGrades Quality Study Identifies Hospitals in Top 5% in Nation; Cities That Have Highest Concentration of Top Hospitals
Patients Treated at HealthGrades Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence Have 30% Lower Chance of Dying
How does the quality of care at hospitals in your area compare? Find out with HealthGrades second annual list of America’s Top Cities for Hospital Care. HealthGrades is the leading provider of information to help consumers make an informed decision about a physician or hospital. The independent rankings are based on a comprehensive study of patient death and complication rates at the nation’s nearly 5,000 hospitals.
As part of its tenth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study, HealthGrades identified those hospitals performing in the top 5% nationwide across 26 different medical procedures and diagnoses, then ranked cities by highest percentage of these Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence™.
Selecting a Top Hospital Matters
In an environment where one in seven Medicare beneficiaries is harmed as a result of their hospitalization (Source: Department of Health and Human Services) and patients are fearful of the very institutions that are entrusted with saving their lives, it is important to identify and acknowledge those hospitals that are leading the way in reducing mortality and complication rates and to provide consumers access to this information.
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The Coding Enabler Comments Off
By Julie Knudson for For The Record
If used correctly, computer-assisted coding can help hospitals alleviate inefficiencies.
As computer-assisted coding (CAC) is deployed by an increasing number of hospitals, its effect on coders is coming into focus. The evolution of workflow changes, productivity increases ahead of ICD-10, and fear of diminishing job prospects are all buzz-worthy topics.
Workflow Changes
The existing workflow within many hospitals could be slowing down coders. Chris Casto, vice president of Dolbey Systems, says coders are currently using what he calls “buckets” of information. “They’re working out of the HIS [hospital information systems], a lot of times they have to log in to nurses’ notes, and they log into billing systems to look at chargemaster codes, so the workflow is really disjointed in a lot of ways.”
Casto believes CAC adoption helps pull those buckets together, giving the coder one place to go for information. “In that fact alone, they really do see, I think, a streamlined workflow because they’re not in multiple applications,” he says. “They’re not logged in all over the place. Everything they need to see is in one place, and it has to be that way for CAC to function effectively.”
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Most Medicare demonstration projects haven’t saved money Comments Off
By Chris Anderson, Senior Editor, Healthcare Finance News
Most of the Medicare fee-for-service demonstration projects launched in the past two decades using disease management and value-based payments have failed to reduce costs, says a report issued yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office.
“In nearly every program involving disease management and care coordination, spending was either unchanged or increased relative to the spending that would have occurred in the absence of the program, when the fees paid to the participating organizations were considered,” the report stated.
Further, while it noted that projects where care managers had substantial direct interactions with both physicians were more likely to reduce costs, the size of those reductions weren’t enough to offset the care managers’ fees.
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Health-Care Sector Adds Jobs as Overall Employment Picture Looks Healthier Comments Off
By Katherine Hobson originally published on WSJ Health Blog
The jobs picture last month improved overall — and the health-care sector, which has been a bright spot throughout the downturn, continued to grow.
As the WSJ reports, nonfarm payrolls rose by 200,000 people in December as the unemployment rate, calculated using a separate survey, fell to 8.5% from 8.7% in November.
Here’s the full report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Job growth at private employers outstripped job losses in government. The health-care industry added 22,600 jobs in December, following a revised increase of 16,000 jobs the previous month. (Originally the government reported a slightly larger November gain of 17,200, as we reported.)
Data from the BLS show the type of facilities that are hiring, but not the specific types of jobs being added. For example, the report shows that hospitals added 9,800 jobs, but doesn’t reveal whether those are physicians, IT support staff or janitors.
Ambulatory health-care services added a net 11,300 jobs as doctors’ offices, outpatient care centers and home-health services all added positions.
Nursing-care facilities shed about 500 jobs. But the broader category of nursing and residential-care facilities overall gained a net 1,500 jobs in December.
OIG Most Wanted Fugitives Comments Off
Gerald T. Roy, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations at the Office of Inspector General lists the agency’s most wanted fugitives responsible for the theft of over $400 million.
Click here to read more information about OIG’s most wanted health care fugitives. In all, they are seeking more than 170 fugitives on charges related to health care fraud and abuse.
Top 11 Trends for 2012 in Healthcare Data, According to Industry Experts Comments Off
A Look Ahead Points to Increased Risks; Regulatory Expectations; Reputational Fallout
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Hospitals and healthcare organizations will need more than a couple of aspirin to ready themselves for 2012. Industry experts representing healthcare law, privacy, security, regulatory and data breach were asked to forecast healthcare data trends for 2012. The overall forecast? Protecting patients’ protected health information (PHI) should be viewed as a patient safety issue. If the right actions are not taken, experts predict healthcare data breach will reach epidemic proportions this year.
2011 was the year when most physicians had mobile devices; when healthcare became one of the most-breached industries; and the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) cracked the whip with investigations and multi-million-dollar fines for organizations that didn’t meet their patient privacy obligations.
Top 2012 predictions in healthcare data:
Protected Patient Data Increasingly Being Lost, Stolen Comments Off
By Cole Petrochko, Associate Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Nearly all healthcare organizations responding to a survey — 96% — reported that patient or related information has been lost, stolen, or otherwise compromised within the last two years.
The number of data breaches involving protected health information rose by 32% from 2010, according to interview data published online by the independent privacy and data protection group the Ponemon Institute.
Three out of 10 respondents (29%) said a data breach resulted in medical identity theft — up 26%.
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10 Challenges Healthcare CEOs Can No Longer Ignore Comments Off
Written by Chuck Lauer and posted at Becker’s Hospital Review
Healthcare presents a number of urgent challenges that executives can no longer afford to put off. I was considering what advice to give CEOs facing this brave new world when I heard a remarkable speech at the National Center for Healthcare Leadership’s annual event. Michael Dowling, the president and CEO of NorthShore-Long Island Jewish Health System, made some incredibly prescient points upon receiving the NCHL’s Gail L. Warden Leadership Award.
Mr. Dowling believes we are at a historic crossroads in healthcare that demands not just run-of-the-mill courage, but truly gutsy action. What he said brought tears of recognition to my eyes. The following points incorporate some of his views with some of my own on dealing with a time of fast-paced change that, if you don’t watch out, will knock you off-balance.
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5 ‘Gotchas’ of ICD-10 Implementation Comments Off
Rene Letourneau, Managing Editor, Healthcare Finance News
SOUTH PORTLAND, ME – A panel of ICD-10 experts spoke Friday at a conference co-hosted by the New England Health Information and Management Systems Society and Maine Healthcare Financial Management Association in South Portland, Maine, giving advice about the five ‘gotchas’ that can wreak havoc on the best-laid plans for implementing the new coding system.
Janet Sayers, HIM/compliance manager at Applied Management Systems, Andrew Adams, senior manager at Ernst & Young and Dan Roy, ICD-10 project manager at MaineGeneral Health warned against these five potential pitfalls:
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10 Notorious Healthcare Execs in 2011 Comments Off
Written for FierceHealthFinance
We expect healthcare executives to set the tone at their organizations and to inspire their teams into becoming the best providers in the region — or the country. But that’s not always how things shake out. Sometimes these leaders run astray, taking the hospitals’ finances or reputations down with them.
