Quality and Safety

According to a study published last month in Health Affairs, wellness programs linked to health plan enrollment don't seem to lower overall healthcare costs, however, they have been shown to reduce hospitalizations.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) announced that it will evaluate a new, more sensitive measurement tool that is intended to improve the care and the outcomes of patients with heart disease and diabetes.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) on Friday debated how to change the payment method for chronically critically ill patients in acute care and long-term care hospitals so they are more accurate and based on patient needs.

The U.S. healthcare system is going to have to gain control over unnecessary spending said Don Berwick and Rosemary Gibson during their respective keynotes at a conference last week for healthcare stakeholders in Maine.

For several years now Truman Medical Centers (TMC), a two-hospital system based in Kansas City, Mo., has been finding ways to encourage healthy living for its high proportion of patients in the community with chronic health problems like diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure and obesity. TMC's latest effort? A healthy foods grocery store.

With recent studies indicating that music reduces agitation and depression in people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease, long-term care operators have begun adding music therapy programs to the services they offer residents. One operator is finding that using music therapy is benefitting the business as well as the residents.

A Maine-based initiative of a national campaign to rein in unnecessary care began to take shape Wednesday at a daylong conference focused on making the state the first in the nation to achieve the Triple Aim.

North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory unveiled what he called a "comprehensive framework for reform" for Medicaid that would offer recipients integrated physical and behavioral healthcare while simplifying billing and administration for providers.

While the focus on many initiatives in transforming hospitals to an accountable care model has focused on IT tools and investments, the biggest challenge facing providers moving to an ACO model is managing the business process change, according to a new analysis by market research firm Frost & Sullivan.

For 15 years, Congress has bestowed special privileges to some small remote hospitals, usually in rural areas, to help them stay afloat. Despite these benefits, there's new evidence that the quality of many of these hospitals may be deteriorating.