Amol Navathe Wins AcademyHealth 'Best Abstract' Award
Measuring Emergency Care Survival: The Implications of Risk-Adjusting for Race and Poverty
Kimon L.H. Ioannides, Avi Baehr, David N. Karp, Douglas J. Wiebe, Brendan G. Carr,...
ABSTRACT [FROM JOURNAL]
Objectives: We determined the impact of including race, ethnicity, and poverty in risk adjustment models for emergency care sensitive conditions mortality that could be used for hospital pay‐for‐performance initiatives. We hypothesized that adjusting for race, ethnicity, and poverty would bolster rankings for hospitals that cared for a disproportionate share of non‐white, Hispanic, or poor patients.
Methods: We performed a cross‐sectional analysis
...Trends in hospital-SNF relationships in the care of Medicare beneficiaries
Joshua M. Liao, R. Tamara Konetzka, Rachel M. Werner
Abstract [from journal]
Improving the value of post-acute care at skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) has become a Medicare policy priority. Anecdotally, hospitals have responded by formally acquiring or pursuing tighter informal connections with SNFs. We evaluated the trend in connections between US acute care hospitals and Medicare-certified SNFs between 2000 and 2013 using vertical integration and two novel network-based measures (number of SNF partners, and...
Where Patients Go After Hospital Discharge: Trends in Post-Acute Care
As the largest single source of health care spending, hospitals have drawn considerable attention from policymakers. Efforts to reduce costs have led to decreased lengths of hospital stays, but far less attention has been paid to where those patients go immediately after discharge. Medicare payment reforms implemented in the wake of the Affordable Care Act, such as hospital readmissions penalties and bundled payments, have made hospitals accountable for care beyond their walls, including institutional post-acute care.
An Afternoon with Atul Gawande at Penn Medicine
The 340B Program Hits a Crisis Point
As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implement nearly $1.6 billion in cuts to the 340B Drug Pricing Program, a new study looks at the consequences of the program, and questions whether it has had its intended effect of helping safety-net hospitals serve poor and vulnerable populations.
The Use of Individual Provider Performance Reports by US Hospitals
In the Journal of Hospital Medicine, Joshua Rolnick and Kira Ryskina analyze trends in how hospitals use the electronic health record to track and provide feedback on provider performance. The authors use data from a nationally representative survey of US hospitals from 2013 to 2015 to identify hospitals that have used electronic data to create individual provider performance profiles (IPPs). They model how the odds of IPP use differ as a function of hospital characteristics, including ownership (non-profit, for-profit, or government), geographic region, teaching versus...
LDI 2018 Pilot Study Grants Announced
What Every Graduating Resident Needs to Know About Quality Improvement and Patient Safety: A Content Analysis of 26 Sets of ACGME Milestones
Meghan Lane-Fall, Joshua J. Davis, Justin Clapp, Jennifer S. Myers, Lee Ann Riesenberg
In the Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, Meghan Lane-Fall and colleagues analyze milestones – competency-based outcomes assessing graduate medical trainees – across 26 specialties to identify common expectations related to quality improvement (QI) and patient safety (PS). The purpose of this work is to move toward a consensus around what every medical trainee needs to know in QI and PS, irrespective of specialty.
The authors performed a content analysis of 612 published milestones from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)....
Regional Variation in Standardized Costs of Care at Children’s Hospitals
Jennifer A. Jonas, Samir S. Shah, Isabella Zaniletti, Matthew Hall, Jeffrey D. Colvin, Laura M. Gottlieb, Marion R. Sills, Jessica Bettenhausen, Rustin B. Morse, Michelle L. Macy, Evan S. Fieldston
In the Journal of Hospital Medicine, Evan Fieldston and colleagues investigated regional cost variation for three inpatient pediatric conditions, assessed the potential drivers of variation, and estimated the cost savings that could result from reducing variation. With some areas of the country spending close to three times more on health care than others, regional variation in health care spending has been a focus of national attention.
The authors analyzed hospitalizations for asthma, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), and acute gastroenteritis (AGE) at 46 children’s hospitals...
Pediatric Price Transparency: Still Opaque With Opportunities for Improvement
Laura J. Faherty, Charlene A. Wong, Jordyn Feingold, Joan Li, Robert Town, Evan Fieldston, Rachel M. Werner
In Hospital Pediatrics, Laura J. Faherty and colleagues, including Evan Fieldston and Rachel Werner, describe online price transparency data for pediatric care and the consumer experience of obtaining an out-of-pocket estimate from children’s hospitals for a common procedure. Price transparency is gaining importance as families’ portion of health care costs rise.
The study consisted of three parts: an audit of 45 children’s hospital Web sites, "secret shopper" calls to the hospitals to request price estimates for a common pediatric procedure (a tonsillectomy-adenoidectomy...
Post-operative mortality, missed care and nurse staffing in nine countries: A cross-sectional study
Jane E. Ball, Luk Bruyneel, Linda H. Aiken, Walter Sermeus, Douglas M. Sloane, Anne Marie Rafferty, Rikard Lindqvist, Carol Tishelman, Peter Griffiths, RN4CAST Consortium
In International Journal of Nursing Studies, Jane Ball and colleagues, including Linda Aiken, examine if missed nursing care explains the observed association between nurse staffing levels and mortality. Previous research has shown that higher postoperative mortality rates are associated with lower nurse staffing levels. When nurse staffing levels are lower, there is a higher incidence of necessary but missed nursing care. The authors collected data from 422,730 patients from 300 general acute hospitals, and administered surveys to 26,516 registered nurses to understand staffing...
Understanding High Utilization of Unscheduled Care in Pregnant Women of Low Socioeconomic Status
Pooja K. Mehta, Tamala Carter, Cjloe Vinoya, Shreya Kangovi, Sindhu K. Srinivas
In Women’s Health Issues, Pooja Mehta and colleagues, including Shreya Kangovi and Sindhu Srinivas, seek to understand maternal preference for unscheduled hospital-based obstetric care, in order to inform interventions and improve value of publicly funded care during pregnancy. Previous research has shown that pregnant high utilizers of unscheduled care may be at particular risk for poor perinatal outcomes; however drivers of this association are unknown. The authors conducted a comparative qualitative analysis of in-depth semi structured interviews. Low-income pregnant women...
Video Analysis of Factors Associated With Response Time to Physiologic Monitor Alarms in a Children’s Hospital
Christopher P. Bonafide, A. Russell Localio, John H. Holmes, Vinay M. Nadkarni, Shannon Stemler, Matthew MacMurchy, Miriam Zander, Kathryn E. Roberts, Richard Lin, Ron Keren
In JAMA Pediatrics, Christopher Bonafide and colleagues, including John Holmes and Ron Keren, seek to identify factors associated with nurses' response time to physiologic monitor alarms at the bedside. As nurse response time to bed alarms remains slow, the authors examine patient- and nurse-related factors that affect responses to alarms. The authors video recorded 551 hours of care administered by 38 nurses to 100 children. They find several variables that shorten nurses’ response time to alarms. These include if the patient was on complex care service, if family members were...
Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty Vs. Total Knee Arthroplasty for Medial Compartment Arthritis in Patients Older Than 75 Years: Comparable Reoperation, Revision, and Complication Rates
Homayoun Siman, Atul F. Kamath, Nazly Carrillo, William S. Harmsen, Mark W. Pagnano, Rafael J. Sierra
In The Journal of Arthroplasty, Homayoun Siman and colleagues, including Atul Kamath, assess the effectiveness of unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) vs. total knee arthroplasty (TKA) in similar patients. Prior studies have shown that UKA procedures have advantages over TKA, including preservation of bone stock, shorter and easier recovery, lower overall cost, lower morbidity, better functional outcome, and subjective feeling of a more natural knee. The authors conducted a retrospective review of patients 75 years and older who underwent UKA or TKA over a 10-year period in...