http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. For-profit hospitals are out-performing other hospitals when treating stroke, heart attack and pneumonia patients in emergency departments and, thus, will be more likely to receive bonuses under Medicare's new payment rules, according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hospitals-medicare-reimbursement.html Health Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:37:49 EST news284031462 The use of electronic discharge orders aimed at providing evidence-based decision support and clear instructions to heart failure patients helped increase compliance with quality care measures and lowered hospital readmission rates, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-electronic-discharge-tool-hospital-readmissions.html Cardiology Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:28:39 EST news281881713 Public reporting of how physicians and hospitals perform in quality of care measures leads to improved care for patients. A collaborative team of researchers led by Geoffrey C. Lamb, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, published their findings in the March 2013 edition of Health Affairs. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-quality.html Health Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:00:04 EST news281623962 Health care providers and hospitals are being offered up to $27 billion in federal financial incentives to use electronic health records (EHRs) in ways that demonstrably improve the quality of care. The incentives are based, in part, on the ability to electronically report clinical quality measures. By 2014, providers nationwide will be expected to document and report care electronically, and by 2015, they will face financial penalties if they don't meaningfully use EHRs. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-ways-quality-electronic-health.html Health Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:43:06 EST news277483378 Availability of CT colonography (CTC), commonly known as virtual colonoscopy, is increasing colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates across military medical facilities. Inclusion of CTC as a Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS)-compliant colorectal cancer (CRC) screening test can potentially raise overall screening rates, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-inclusion-ctc-hedis-screening-modality.html Cancer Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:44:36 EST news277058669 The relationship between a physician practice's adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and quality improvements in patient care remains unclear. However, a new study published in the January issue of Health Affairs by Weill Cornell Medical College and the Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) of the New York City Health Department shows evidence that EHR implementation can improve patient care in small physician practices in New York City when combined with sustained high-intensity technical assistance. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-electronic-health-technical-patient-york.html Health Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:32:38 EST news276798709 New research into controversial pay-for-performance schemes has suggested they may help to save the lives of NHS patients. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-financial-incentives-hospital-mortality.html Health Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:00:14 EST news271518169 The use of electronic health records is linked to significantly higher quality care, according to a new study by Lisa Kern and her team, from the Health Information Technology Evaluation Collaborative in the US. Their work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-doctors-digital-higher-quality-healthcare.html Health Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:10:00 EST news269698183 (HealthDay)—The easiest way to assess a hospital's quality of care might be to just ask the nurses, new research suggests. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-hospital-quality-nurse.html Health Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:40:01 EST news269194404 Use of electronic health records was associated with improved drug-treatment intensification, monitoring, and risk-factor control among patients with diabetes, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-ehr-outcomes-patients-diabetes.html Diabetes Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:00:02 EST news268329263 A study suggests that safety-net hospitals (SNHs), which typically care for poor patients, performed more poorly than other hospitals on nearly every measure of patient experience and that could have financial consequences as hospital payments are connected to performance, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-patient-safety-net-hospitals.html Health Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:00:16 EST news261673073 A new study shows that natural language processing programs can "read" dictated reports and provide information to allow measurement of colonoscopy quality in an inexpensive, automated and efficient manner. The quality variation observed in the study within a single academic hospital system reinforces the need for routine quality measurement. The study appears in the June issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-natural-language-tool-electronic-health.html Other Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:28:25 EST news259504088 In-hospital mortality for ICU patients is often used as a quality measure, but discharge practices may bias results in a way that disadvantages large academic hospitals, according to a recently conducted study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-in-hospital-mortality-icu-bias-quality.html Other Mon, 21 May 2012 09:47:46 EST news256812454 While nursing homes are the place where an estimated 30 percent of Americans die, there currently exists no way to compare which institutions do a better job at managing end of life care. A new study appearing this week in the Journal of Palliative Medicine is starting a discussion over the need to create end of life quality measures in order to both inform consumers and provide nursing homes with incentive to improve care. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-ways-end-of-life-nursing-homes.html Health Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:14:59 EST news253797288 Nearly one in four women who undergo a partial mastectomy for treatment of breast cancer have another surgery to remove additional tissue (reexcision), and there is substantial surgeon and institutional variation in the rate of reexcisions that cannot be explained by patients' clinical characteristics, according to a study in the February 1 issue of JAMA. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-substantial-variability-additional-surgery-partial.html Surgery Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:00:02 EST news247239286 Hospitals, health insurers and patients often rely on patient death rates in hospitals to compare hospital quality. Now a new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine questions the accuracy of that widely used approach and supports measuring patient deaths over a period of 30 days from admission even after they have left the hospital. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-death-hospital-quality.html Health Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:53:03 EST news244821177 The scoring system government agencies use to rate nursing home quality does not provide an adequate evaluation because they do not take into account the degree of cognitive impairment of their patient populations and whether facilities include a specialized dementia unit according to a new study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-nursing-home-quality-scorecards-dont.html Health Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:43:02 EST news241094574 There is a large variation in unplanned reoperation rates after colorectal surgery in English NHS hospitals, finds a study published in the British Medical Journal today. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-variation-bowel-reoperation-prompts-quality.html Other Wed, 17 Aug 2011 04:33:08 EST news232774350 A new Commonwealth Fund report finds that Medicaid managed care plans that are owned by publicly traded for-profit companies whose primary line of business is managing Medicaid enrollees spent an average of 14 percent of premiums on administrative costs, compared with an average of only 10 percent spent by non-publicly traded plans owned by groups of health care providers, health systems, community health centers, or clinics. Sampling health plans with at least 5,000 enrollees resulted in an initial sample of 225 Medicaid managed care plans representing 23.8 million enrollees. The numbers of plans reporting quality of care measures was limited and varied by measure. Only 27 percent of the publicly traded Medicaid-only plans reported quality measures and scored lower on these measures compared to non-publicly traded plans; they scored 13 percentage points lower when it came to managing chronic illness, and 11 percentage points lower on a composite score measuring preventive care. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-medicaid-companies-higher-adminstrative.html Health Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:23:03 EST news227330559 New studies released in the April issue of the Journal of Correctional Health Care (JCHC) (published by SAGE) are helping the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a set of prison health care quality measurements. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-california-department-yields-quality.html Health Mon, 16 May 2011 12:38:04 EST news224768216