Hospitals & Health Networks: Features

Chassin and the Joint Commission Aim to Inspire

Howard Larkin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

Mark Chassin, M.D., became president of the Joint Commission in January 2008 with an ambitious goal: to make the organization an active partner with hospitals so that together they could transform health care into a "high reliability" enterprise‚ maintaining the best quality and safest performance possible over long periods of time. In the process, theJoint Commission has adjusted how it c...

Real Connections: Patient to Staff and Staff to Staff

Haydn Bush — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

Relationship-based care, which advocates building strong personal ties between caregivers, patients and their families, has traditionally been a strategy employed by hospital nursing departments. But leaders at Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare, a small system based in Utica, N.Y., say relationship-based care can transform every aspect of a hospital's operation—from food service to the finance department.

In 2004, Faxton Hospital and St. Luke's-Memorial Hospital were in the middle of a difficult...

Recent Research

null — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

Hospitals can track adverse effects related to blood transfusions

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February launched the Hemovigilance Module of the National Healthcare Safety Network, or NHSN. All U.S. hospitals that transfuse blood and blood components can enroll and contribute data on adverse events associated with blood transfusions. The aim is to improve patient safety by enabling health care personnel to identify trends in their respective hospitals as well as allowing an...

Team - Based Care

null — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

Research by Matthew Weinstock

There's No 'I' in Team

Health care is a team sport, but all too often practitioners act as individual players. They're siloed from the time they walk into medical, nursing or pharmacy schools to the time they touch their first patient. And while they may interact with each other in the care of a patient or a group of patients, those collaborations typically occur in short bursts and can result in communication lapses. Studies from the Joint...

A Timeout on Construction

Dave Carpenter and Suzanna Hoppszallern — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

Over the last three decades, health care facility construction has maintained a steady pace even during economic slowdowns. Not this time.

A triple whammy of recession, credit crisis and the unknowns surrounding health care reform muffled the industry's nearly decade-long building boom in 2009, and no turnaround is imminent.

Industry veterans such as York Chan say they saw nothin...

CMIOs Steadily on the Rise

Maureen McKinney — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

The number of chief medical information officers is steadily increasing as meaningful use requirements and potential incentive payments outlined in the stimulus law make it more important than ever for hospitals to integrate the efforts of their IT and quality departments.

According to William Bria, M.D., CMIO of Shriner's Hospital for Children, Tampa, Fla., clinician involvement and o...

A Silver Lining for the Lucky Few

Dave Carpenter — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CST

On the bright side, the Great Recession has provided a rare opportunity for some health care organizations to save millions of dollars on material and labor costs.

Certainly not all could take advantage of the savings during the economic slump. Many projects across the country were halted in place or had their target dates pushed back. But those with the confidence and financial reserves to proceed with construction projects realized unexpected gains.

Who'll Run Your IT?

Howard Larkin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 CST

Building a hospital information technology staff with the complex mix of clinical, computer and process engineering skills required to support advanced health care applications has always been tough. It's about to get tougher. Over the next five years, hospitals face a triple whammy of major IT changes that will produce acute shortages of skilled IT workers.

First up are tightened HIP...

Power to the Patient

Harris Meyer — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 CST

The staff physicians of Group Health Cooperative, a Seattle-based multispecialty group practice and health plan, pride themselves on practicing evidence-based medicine. That's why they were shocked when they found up to twofold differences among themselves in the use of 12 elective surgical procedures such as hysterectomy and knee replacement.

The data suggested some doctors' rates were too high, or too low. The differences were particularly stark between doctors in the Seattle area, who generall...

Patient Care Quality and Safety Steadily Rising

null — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 CST

Accredited hospitals in the United States have steadily improved the quality of patient care over a seven-year period, saving lives and improving the health of thousands of patients, according to Improving America's Hospitals: The Joint Commission's Report on Quality and Safety 2009.

The report provides scientific evidence of improvements in the care of patients with heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical conditions. Since their inception as core measures in 2002, pneumococcal vacci...