RESEARCH BRIEF
A team from RAND and the University HealthSystem Consortium developed a toolkit to help hospitals enhance their quality improvement efforts using quality indicators from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
BLOG
A better solution than restricting emergency department use by Medicaid enrollees is to reverse what for many years has been a trend of shrinking access to primary care for Medicaid beneficiaries.
COMMENTARY
Hospitals that perform better on the survey tend to do better on clinical measures, have fewer readmissions within 30 days and have lower risk-adjusted mortality, write Marc Elliott and Alan Zaslavsky.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Examines net costs to teaching hospitals and cost-effectiveness to society across a range of hypothetical changes in preventable adverse events (PAEs).
REPORT
The study reports on the evidence and potential for use of 'emergency readmissions within 28 days of discharge from hospital' as an indicator within the NHS Outcomes Framework, drawing on a rapid review of systematic reviews.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Targeting the experiences of women may be a promising means of improving overall patient experience scores (because women comprise a majority of all inpatients); the experiences of older and sicker women, and those in for-profit hospitals, may merit additional examination.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Examines co-occurrence of iatrogenic events in US hospitals. Using Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality patient safety indicators (PSIs), the authors defined multiple patient safety events (MPSEs) as the occurrence of multiple PSIs during a single hospitalization.
PROJECT
A new online tool, called the "Unintended Consequences Guide," is available from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to help hospitals and other health care organizations anticipate, avoid, and address problems that can occur when adopting and using electronic health records.
COMMENTARY
Hospitals operating with little competition are able to charge health plans much higher prices, which are passed on to consumers in the form of higher insurance premiums, writes Glenn Melnick.
NEWS RELEASE
Use of retail medical clinics located in pharmacies and other retail settings increased tenfold between 2007 and 2009. The determining factors in choosing one over a physician's office were found to be age, health status, income, and proximity to the clinic.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Use of retail medical clinics located in pharmacies and other retail settings increased tenfold between 2007 and 2009. The determining factors in choosing one over a physician's office were found to be age, health status, income, and proximity to the clinic.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This paper applies a Markov decision process to the challenge of matching hospital staffing levels to inpatient demand.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Vulnerable older adults enrolled in plans that use nurse care managers receive, on average, 69% of recommended care for geriatric conditions, compared with 53% for elders in plans without nurse care managers.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Current federal standards for hospital "meaningful use" of health information technology--which requires electronic medication orders for 30 percent of eligible patients--are probably too low to reduce deaths from heart failure and heart attack among hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries.
REPORT
Under Medicare, many health care services can be provided in a range of ambulatory settings, but payment differentials exist for the facility-related components of care. Building on prior RAND analyses, this report presents options for modifying Medicare payment policies to improve the value of services and to address cost and payment differentials for similar services provided in various ambulatory settings.
REPORT
Considers potential efforts by the U.S. Department of Defense to assess the performance of military treatment facilities (MTFs) in cost-effectively managing health care. The authors first provide an overview of performance assessment in the nonmilitary health care sector; they then analyze the use of average MTF utilization and costs as performance measures, focusing on how MTF size and catastrophic cases affect these metrics.
RESEARCH BRIEF
Between 1990 and 2009, the number of emergency rooms (ERs) in nonrural U.S. hospitals declined by 27 percent (from 2,446 to 1,779). Economic factors play a central role in an ER's ability to remain open.
NEWS RELEASE
Increased consolidation among health plans nationally may benefit consumers by lowering hospital prices, at least in those regions where health plans are the most consolidated.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Increased consolidation among health plans nationally may benefit consumers by lowering hospital prices, at least in those regions where health plans are the most consolidated.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Many hospital-acquired infections are preventable; reducing them would reduce in-hospital mortality, length of stay, and inpatient costs for trauma patients.
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