Solutions to ER Crowding Are “Grossly Underused”

Boarding in emergency departments, which is at the root of crowding and potentially dangerous wait times, could be virtually eliminated by implementing a number of strategies proven to improve efficiency, but federal regulation may be required to bring those strategies into widespread use.

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Virtual Quality Improvement Collaborative Improves Quality and Safety in Hospitals

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released results from a prestigious national program to improve the quality and safety of patient care in hospitals. The effort is part of Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), the Foundation’s signature effort to improve the quality of health care in 16 targeted communities across the country, reduce disparities, and provide models of reform.

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Outperform the Competition: Hospital Value-Based Purchasing

Outperform the Competition: Hospital Value-Based Purchasing

Competition to capture the highest incentive payments from the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program is going to be very tight. “Even if you are above the 90th percentile, you could still have a very poor score and leave money on the table,” said Tami Lewis in a recent Modern Healthcare article (McKinney, 2012).

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The RTLS Patient Safety Improvement Opportunity

Technology

The RTLS Patient Safety Improvement Opportunity

The goals of any healthcare technology should be to improve healthcare quality and patient safety, contain or reduce healthcare costs, mitigate risk exposures, and enhance revenues. Relatively few technologies score high in meeting all of those objectives, but real-time location systems (RTLS) clearly do.

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