• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

CMW Sneak Peek: Data collection, analysis lead to positive outcomes

Case Management Weekly, December 10, 2008

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Case Management Weekly!

Recovery audit contractors (RAC), present on admission, and January’s loss of the Program to Evaluate Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) signal an urgent need for hospitals to take control of data collection to determine improvement opportunities and influence physician behavior.

At Underwood-Memorial Hospital (UMH) in Woodbury, NJ, the case management and health information management (HIM) departments work together to analyze and scrutinize data for opportunities to change or enhance processes. Using data in this way has helped identify improvements and better educate and influence physicians.

UMH uses 3M’s comprehensive HDM system for collecting and analyzing data. “Even though we’re not getting the PEPPER reports anymore, we’re still using [the information it provided] as a guide going forward,” says Lisa Nutt, RN, BSN, CCM, director of case management and social work at UMH. “We have a very robust benchmarking program which can slice and dice length-of-stay case-mix index by DRG and by physician.”

“We looked at our severity of illness and our mortality rates by certain DRGs,” says Nutt. “What we found is we really did have an opportunity to improve our documentation.” The data showed physician documentation did not accurately demonstrate how sick patients were when compared to case-mix indexes. With the data, Nutt says physicians responded well because they could clearly see the problem.

Check out the December 2008 issue of Case Management Monthly to get the full story, and discover all the benefits of being a Case Management Monthly subscriber!

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Case Management Weekly!

• Comment
• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive

Comments