|
 |
 |
Under new plan, hospitals to get cash for improving quality
August 14, 2007
www.boston.com
BOSTON-Hospitals that improve their quality and shrink the state's racial and ethnic health care gap are eligible for cash rewards under the state's new "pay for performance" program.
Incentives will be based on achievement or improvement in five key health care areas, including high-volume or high-risk procedures and processes.
Those areas include maternity and newborn care, pediatric asthma care, community acquired pneumonia, surgical infection prevention, and health disparities prevention. Twenty million dollars has been set aside for incentive payments in the first year of the program.
For each category, the program establishes a baseline threshold and a best practice benchmark. Hospitals must meet the minimum threshold to get any incentive payment.
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
A Basic Hospital To-Do List Saves Lives
This is a call to arms for everyone who may someday be hospitalized, or who has a relative who may someday be hospitalized — which is to say everyone. Read more...
While Humans slept, bacteria were evolving
A government report released last week essentially confirmed what many in the medical community already knew: With each passing day, more bacteria become resistant to our arsenal of antibiotics, and we have no new and effective drugs to fight the microbes. Read more...
10 Overused Tests and Treatments
Back Surgery:
Don’t rush to surgery for a simple slipped disk. In 90% of cases, the pain goes away on its own within six weeks. Read more...
Report Assails F.D.A. Oversight of Clinical Trials
The Food and Drug Administration does very little to ensure the safety of the millions of people who participate in clinical trials, a federal investigator has found. Read more...
Medicare Ends Coverage for Hospital Errors
Beginning next year, Medicare will stop paying for hospital mistakes. Under rules issued last week, the government insurance program will no longer pay extra to treat certain infections that patients pick up in the hospital. Read more...
The Health Care Cost Boom: Health spending to double by 2016
Growth in the rate of health care spending has remained relatively steady over the past few years, but health care spending overall continues to grow faster than inflation and wage increases. Read more...
Hospital-Acquired Infections: Prevalent and Costly in Pennsylvania
The latest figures from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) paint a disturbing picture of the prevalence, safety, and cost of hospital-acquired infections in Pennsylvania. Read more...
Under new plan, hospitals to get cash for improving quality
Hospitals that improve their quality and shrink the state’s racial and ethnic health care gap are eligible for cash rewards under the state’s new “pay for performance” program. Read more...
PA’s Infection Medicine
It lurks beneath the surface, a shark like predator that slips in undetected. As a surgeon secures a bodily opening in an otherwise successful operation, this stealth invader begins to feast upon its prey. Read more...
PA Aims at Staph Infections
Rendell will sign a bill today designed to reduce the spread of bacteria acquired at hospitals Read more...
Hospital Infections Attorneys
Thousand of patients each year contract infections – often fatal – while they are hospitalized. In a recently released survey it was reported that 19,154 patients suffered infections contracted while in Pennsylvania hospitals, with 2,478 dying as a result of those infections. Read more...
911 Dispatchers Denied Dying Woman Help
Hospital Investigated for Breakdowns in Patient Care
The case of Edith Rodriguez, the 43-year-old mother of three who collapsed in the emergency room of Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King Jr. – Harbor Hospital in May and died after not receiving help, has raised questions about the quality of hospital care and left a family grieving. Read more...
Scrutinizing Heart Surgery
Shortly after 7:30 yesterday morning at Doylestown Hospital, cardiac surgeon Joseph S. Auteri made the first incision of the three-hour operation to replace two diseased heart valves. It was an operation he has done hundreds of times in a career filled with thousands of open-heart procedures. But for Auteri, who grew up in Bucks County and moved back from Virginia only recently, the local medical environment is all new. Read more...
What you Need to Know About Hospital Night Shifts
More medication errors happen at night, so be sure to keep a list of all medicines and the doses you are taking. Read more...
Does where you live determine if you’ll live?
A great medical secret – hospital death rates – will be made public in a bold federal initiative. Read
more...
President’s Message
Hospital infection report a wake-up call for patient safety Read
more... |
| |
|
|
