Health junction

Hospital Safety In Light of the Ebola Scare Due to public hysteria and resulting quarantine for Ebola patients, family members, and anyone who may have come in contact with any of these unfortunate individuals, this is a good time for consumers to re-acquaint themselves with patient safety standards through publicly available sources. First a primer on the main causes of adverse patient safety events in hospitals in the United States. In patient safety lexicon when something goes wrong in health care treatment while in a hospital setting, this is referred to as an adverse event. There are a number of health care organizations within the nation that track patient safety information including: the Centers for Disease Control, Joint Commission for Hospital Accreditation, the National Quality Forum and several nonprofit entities. Of the nonprofit leaders, The Leapfrog Group� is known for its annual hospital quality and patient safety survey, of which over 5,000 hospitals participate. In a...

Washington�s Winner-take-all Hospital Billing Environment Why do we tolerate a 300% difference in treatment for the same procedures among our hospitals? Washington Health Alliance, a nonprofit consortium of healthcare organizations has just published the results of a statewide survey of hospital billing for treatment of stroke and a variety of other conditions. [1] The data for the analysis was extracted from Medicare records through 2012. While I worked for a hospital network I was involved in a value proposition to increase recovery efficacy for stroke patients by getting them into treatment quicker, which was funded with a $6,250 per patient Medicare incentive. This article reviews the high and low price points for stroke treatment by facility and explains the reason for this phenomena and what we can do to fix it.                             ...