Quality and Safety

When a car rolls off an assembly line, the automaker knows exactly what parts, labor and facilities cost. Not so in healthcare, and now some health executives are trying to change that.

While the United States pays the most for healthcare among all other developed nations, it also ranks last when it comes to the quality of care received compared to 10 other western, industrialized nations.

A quarter of the nation's hospitals in October will receive lower Medicare payments because their rates of patient complications are higher than their peers. Here is an explanation of the three measures Medicare is using to calculate the hospital-acquired conditions scores.

Healthcare finance professionals must better understand how value is delivered by frontline providers, and simultaneously offer providers business insight, said an expert on nursing management today at the HFMA ANI 2014 conference.

A quarter of the nation's hospitals, those with the worst rates of hospital-acquired conditions, will lose 1 percent of every Medicare payment for a year starting in October. The sanctions, estimated to total $330 million over a year, kick in at a time when most infections measured in hospitals are on the decline, but still too common.

There are arguably more factors impacting the healthcare revenue cycle today than at any other time in history. The result is an increasingly unpredictable and dynamic revenue cycle that requires constant organizational adaptation and vigilance.

There are more inpatient safety complications happening in hospitals that result in greater costs to patients and the healthcare system than are being monitored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Healthcare reform and the shift toward value instead of volume underscore the importance of population health management for improving patient outcomes on a large scale. One essential component of a comprehensive population health program is patient access.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to make medical care less expensive for the American public; it was not intended to put healthcare providers out of business. But a recent analysis of U.S. hospitals suggests the law could contribute to the demise of hundreds of poor performers.

I am an unabashed proponent of the Lean philosophy in many settings, especially the clinical environment of a hospital. But Lean quickly goes by the wayside without the enthusiastic support and encouragement and personal involvement of senior management.