HCPro.com: Quality Improvement Report

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This informative newsletter is a 12-page monthly resource that provides you with the hands-on advice, tools (including data collection forms), and best practices that you need to ensure your hospital scores high on its quality measures and receives all of the Medicare reimbursement it deserves!

To view the entire newsletter issue, click the “View Entire Issue” link below

September 2008 (Volume 3, Issue 9)	view entire issue

http://www.hcpro.com/admin/content_manager/index.cfm
Hailed by some as a big step forward for patient safety, CMS' addition of new conditions to its no-pay list has others fretting and several asking: Are these conditions 100% preventable? The federal agency in July released its final inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) rule and increased the number of conditions it will no longer pay for unless they were documented as present on admission (POA). The rule takes effect October 1 and adds two new conditions: Certain manifestations of poor control of blood sugar levels Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE) following total knee replacement and hip replacement procedures

Hourly rounding, huddles help prevent patient falls
To reduce patient falls, hospitals should build a care plan that addresses every patient's specific needs and frailties. And should someone tumble despite those precautions, clinicians should form a postfall huddle to ask what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from occurring again. "Those ideas, in my mind, are powerful," says Gail Nielsen, BSHCA, a fellow for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and clinical performance improvement education administrator for Iowa Health System.

Assess all patients to prevent pressure ulcers
Heightened awareness, new beds that provide pressure relief, and skin assessments on every patient entering the facility helped Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, reduce its pressure ulcer rate from 20% to 0.8%. The push to improve the rate for bedsores started in the mid-1990s, when one of the directors came to the hospital and said, "We can do better than this," says Jan Fitzgerald, MS, RN, director of quality and medical management at Baystate.

Other recently-published articles from Quality Improvement Report:

Facilities making progress on infection control?related Patient Safety Goal

Be prepared for early warning system goal

Pandemic influenza risk remains high for hospitals

Gaining stakeholder support for SBAR technique

National Patient Safety Goals: The PI connection

WalkRounds involve senior leaders with frontline staff

Use FMEA to examine the causes of heparin overdoses

Three keys to readying your anticoagulant program

Diabetic patients with many comorbidities need higher levels of insulin

Antibiotic monitoring improves quality, reduces cost

SCIP expert: OR environment can lead to infections

Timeouts need to include the entire surgical team

Q&A with Peter Angood on Universal Protocol

Assess all patients to prevent pressure ulcers

Hourly rounding, huddles help prevent patient falls

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