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HEALTHCARE TRAINING WEEKLY
Friday, January 31, 2003
Volume 2, Number 5

Healthcare Training Weekly, January 28, 2003

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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. Regs spell out quality standards
2. (Safe) drivers wanted
3. A new twist on 'teaching hospitals'
4. Pay-per-view article: Planes, trains, and credits

1. REGS SPELL OUT QUALITY STANDARDS

Rippling over from the long-term care world, Medicare quality requirements for hospitals became official with the publication last Friday of new hospital conditions of participation for quality assessment and performance improvement (QAPI). The final rule addresses several training issues, including the following:

-- Cost: A very rough estimate puts the annual cost of QAPI training for the 6,000 affected hospitals at about $5 million.
-- Data collection: To meet this requirement, affected hospitals could face an annual collected training burden of about 740,000 hours.

Read the new rule under "Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services" at http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a030124c.html

2. (SAFE) DRIVERS WANTED

Does your organization operate an ambulance service? If it does, it might surprise you to learn that your service stands a tenfold greater chance of being sued for bad driving than for medical malpractice. The federal government has a training program for ambulance drivers, but no way to track who has taken the course. Among state governments, training standards range from as little as one hour of classroom work to several days of written and on-the-road instruction. Taxi drivers must meet more stringent requirements, former emergency medical services professional Garry B. Criddle told The Detroit News this week. Criddle helped author federal standards for ambulance drivers.

In the early 1990s, New York City cut its ambulance accident rate from one in every 1,100 calls to one in every 2,900 calls by mandating driver training.

3. A NEW TWIST ON 'TEACHING HOSPITALS'

Instead of searching externally for seasoned coders, officials with Boston's Partners Health System looked for ambitious employees who wanted to train for a new career. They teamed up with Northeastern University in Boston-a school known for its extensive co-op program-and created their own batch of new coders. Northeastern even brought its instructors to the hospital to teach their coding certification course.

Of the eight students selected from Brigham and Women's Hospital (part of the Partners group), four graduated and will be hired by the hospital. This will help to cut the amount the hospital spends on contract employees from $600,000 to $300,000 annually.

The preceding excerpt comes from the HCPro special report, Finder's Keepers: Recruiting and Retaining Coders and Transcriptionists. To order, or to get more information, call our Customer Service department at 800/650-6787, or go to http://www.hcmarketplace.com/Prod.cfm?id=896&S=EHTW
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4. PAY-PER-VIEW ARTICLE
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Mammography

'Planes, trains, and credits'

If the continuing education (CE) program will benefit everyone at Radiology Inc.-a large outpatient imaging center in South Bend, IN-the owners will cover airfare, hotel, and all fees for each of their eight full-time mammographers. Radiology Inc. provides techs with constant training and support, but first evaluates whether a given employee will benefit from it. "You can give people technical skills, but you can't train them to have people skills-so hire for attitude, train for skill," says outpatient director Elaine Vandall.

To read the full story, go to http://www.hcpro.com/onlinepubs/article.cfm?article=25740
The cost is $10. Subscribers to the online version of Mammography Regulation Report (MRR) have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter version of MRR can find this article in their February issues.

For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire February issue of MRR! You'll find stories on the Stark law, power outages, and carrier probes. Go to http://www.hcpro.com/onlinepubs/article.cfm?article=25738 to choose between the PDF and HTML version for just $30. MRR online subscribers have free access to this issue, and print newsletter subscribers can find this issue in their mailboxes.
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