How Cleveland Clinic reduces men's health disparities
by Andrea J. Simon
I am passionate about finding innovative ways to improve men's health. I am always looking for programs that are uniquely designed to reach men, get them engaged in their health, and help them live healthier, longer lives. My May blog post in Hospital Impacton three hospitals and physician groups that are doing just that.
This blog post is an introduction to Charles Modlin, M.D., kidney transplant surgeon, urologist, founder and director of the Minority Men's Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic's Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute, and executive director of Minority Health for Cleveland Clinic...
Source: hospital impact - July 17, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Celebrate your patient experience all-stars
by Jason A. Wolf
In the heat of the summer many of us are thinking about days by the pool, family vacations or cool drinks. It also brings us, this very week, to Major League Baseball's all-star break.
This has always been an interesting and unique tradition in sports, where rather than waiting until the end of a season to identify and recognize performance, the league stops for a moment to celebrate what has taken place so far.
This pause in the action is a bit like summer itself. An intermission of sorts where time is taken to reflect on what has been accomplished and what is yet to be achieved. The question this rai...
Source: hospital impact - July 17, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Will health IT failings foil accountable care?
by Gienna Shaw, FierceHealthIT
Although healthcare is awash in data, getting it into the hands of clinicians so they can provide coordinated, quality care at the bedside remains a huge challenge. Just ask the 32 Pioneer accountable care organizations--including the nine Pioneer ACOs that may opt out of the program altogether.
The Pioneers, who say the success of accountable care organizations hinges on data and technology, were already raising red flags about interoperability and the difficulties of implementing new health IT systems.
Then, earlier this year, they threatened to drop out of the program unless the Center...
Source: hospital impact - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Lancaster General on reducing hospital pharmacy costs
by Jill Rebuck
Hospital standardization programs typically involve physician preference items for orthopedic/spine and the catheterization lab. However, this approach also can be used in other departments as hospitals look for ways to cut costs.
In particular, pharmacies represent a significant cost-saving opportunity since pharmaceuticals represent a substantial percent of hospitals' operating budgets.
We took this approach at Lancaster General Health (LGH), a 623-licensed bed, not-for-profit health system in Central Pennsylvania, keeping the focus on providing the safest, highest quality medications while lowering co...
Source: hospital impact - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Physician engagement must-dos
by Jonathan H. Burroughs
After covering how not to engage physicians, it is time to build a successful foundation for physician engagement and alignment.
The first truism is that cultural alignment precedes economic alignment precedes clinical alignment. To put this into plain English, you first want to determine with whom to have a relationship before you determine what type of contract to create and before you can work together to optimize quality and minimize costs.
Sadly, this order is often reversed, which is why so many engagement and alignment efforts fail. If you attempt to work on quality efforts with an indep...
Source: hospital impact - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Beware unintended consequences of hospital-doc integration
by Kent Bottles
The conventional wisdom seems to be playing out all over the United States. Because of healthcare reform and the transition away from fee-for-service payment, hospitals are buying up physician practices.
Many physicians in private practice have decided they do not have the necessary capital for purchasing electronic medical records or the time to understand all the new laws and regulations. Many see consolidation of the healthcare industry as a foregone conclusion to the adoption of the Affordable Care Act.
Although the increasing integration of hospitals and physicians makes perfect sense to me, I am ...
Source: hospital impact - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Surviving healthcare reform with collaboration, partnership
by Ninfa M. Saunders
Last month the Medical Center of Central Georgia (MCCG) in Macon, Ga., and Houston Healthcare (HHC) in Warner Robins, Ga., announced to their employees and the public their plan to form a strategic partnership.
Although the announcement was very surprising to our employees and our two communities, the idea of our two health systems collaborating is sensible and necessary.
Changes in the national model for healthcare delivery, along with our commitment to focus on quality and safety in tandem with population health management, led MCCG and HHC to reevaluate the nature of our relationship. Partnersh...
Source: hospital impact - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Communication technology vital to boosting patient experience
by Dan Bowman, FierceHealthIT
Technology's role in helping hospitals to create positive patient experiences often boils down to one core truth: communication is key.
With that in mind, officials at both Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center and the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers have been able to boost patient satisfaction by improving communications processes for both providers and patients.
At Ohio State--a 976-bed academic medical center in Columbus, Ohio--CIO Phyllis Teater (right) and her team have based a bulk of the facility's latest IT efforts on the former.
"We believe that the tec...
Source: hospital impact - July 7, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Healing the healer in healthcare
by Thomas Dahlborg
"I'm a family doc in Eugene, Ore., where we've lost three physicians in 18 months to suicide. I was suicidal once. Assembly-line medicine was killing me. Too many patients and not enough time sets us up for failure."
There are many studies highlighting the harm our broken healthcare system is doing to patients--e.g., hospital errors occurring in one-third of all hospital admissions; medical mistakes contributing to up to 187,135 deaths and 6.1 million injuries; an estimated annual cost of measurable preventable medical errors of $17.1 billion (based on 2008 dollars).
But what about the harm caregivers...
Source: hospital impact - July 7, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Interprofessional education: The answer to better healthcare communication
by Dr. Courtney H. Lyder
In a recent editorial in The New York Times, Theresa Brown wrote about how clinical hierarchies and the impact of conflict between nurses and physicians can be deadly for a patient. She said "when doctors and nurses don't get along, it's the patient who suffers."
A lot of studies show that poor communication is linked to adverse patient outcomes. For example, of the 1,243 sentinel events reported to the Joint Commission in 2011, communication problems were identified in 60 percent.
By its very nature, healthcare is complicated; it is a rapidly changing environment and unpredictable. Professional...
Source: hospital impact - July 5, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Healthcare needs to heal the healer
by Thomas Dahlborg
"I'm a family doc in Eugene, Ore., where we've lost three physicians in 18 months to suicide. I was suicidal once. Assembly-line medicine was killing me. Too many patients and not enough time sets us up for failure."
There are many studies highlighting the harm our broken healthcare system is doing to patients--e.g., hospital errors occurring in one-third of all hospital admissions; medical mistakes contributing to up to 187,135 deaths and 6.1 million injuries; an estimated annual cost of measurable preventable medical errors of $17.1 billion (based on 2008 dollars).
But what about the harm caregivers...
Source: hospital impact - July 5, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
What toddlers at Disney can teach about improving patient experience
by Doug Della Pietra
How might the answer to "What most captures the attention of toddlers and infants at Disney World" guide caregivers in improving the patient experience?
Kare Anderson, in her fascinating HBR blog post, described what she and a cultural anthropologist discovered as they observed toddlers and infants at Disney:
"After a couple of hours of close observation, we realized that what most captured the young children's attention wasn't Disney-conjured magic. Instead it was their parents' cell phones, especially when the parents were using them." She continued, "When parents were using their phones, they we...
Source: hospital impact - July 2, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Mobility helps our docs provide faster, better care
by Mony Weschler
Here at Montefiore Medical Center we incorporate leading-edge healthcare technology systems. Our clinicians handle a high volume of patients and rely on information systems to maintain and consistently strengthen the quality of care.
In the 1990s, we were one of the earliest adopters of electronic medical records (EMR) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE)--driven by the expanding continuum of care and an increasing number of clinicians working across multiple facilities, as well as government requirements such as Meaningful Use.
Today our challenge is to reliably deliver that data to physicians...
Source: hospital impact - June 28, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Finding the pony in healthcare
by Kenneth H. Cohn
I confess to having an out-of-body experience last week.
As I listened to two orthopedic surgeons state why they could not trust hospital administrators to keep their word, I imagined Ronald Reagan telling a favorite story about twin boys whose parents brought them to a psychiatrist because they seemed to develop extreme personalities.
First, the psychiatrist approached the overly pessimistic boy with a bunch of new toys. The boy cried. "If I played with them, I'm afraid that I'd break them," he explained.
The psychiatrist next approached the optimistic twin, taking him to a room full of horse ma...
Source: hospital impact - June 28, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Calling all finance leaders: Price transparency needed now
by Ilene MacDonald, FierceHealthcare
Last week I had the privilege to attend the Healthcare Financial Management Association in Orlando, Fla., when it announced its release of draft best practices for financial interactions and the establishment of a task force to address transparency issues.
These bold moves, under the direction of HFMA President and CEO Joseph H. Fifer, come at a time when the healthcare industry is under siege from all directions--the government, payers and consumers who are fed up with rising costs and don't understand their out-of-pocket expenses.
Healthcare financial leaders can no longer keep ...
Source: hospital impact - June 28, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
