Journal for healthcare quality : official publication of the National Association for Healthcare Quality
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Comparative Study
Association of Magnet Nursing Status With Hospital Performance on Nationwide Quality Metrics.
Magnet Recognition is the highest distinction a healthcare organization can receive for excellence in nursing. Although Magnet status is generally associated with superior clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, its association with performance on nationwide quality metrics is currently unknown. ⋯ Level III, retrospective study.
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Older Veterans are increasingly undergoing surgery and are at particularly high risk of postoperative morbidity and mortality. Prehabilitation has emerged as a method to improve postoperative outcomes by enhancing the patient's preoperative condition. We present data from our prehabilitation pilot project and plans for expansion and dissemination of a nationwide quality improvement effort. ⋯ Postoperative outcomes including complications, 30-day mortality, and 30-day readmissions were better than predicted by the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Surgical Risk Calculator. We have obtained institutional support for implementing similar prehabilitation programs at VA hospitals nationally through our designation as a VA Patient Safety Center for Inquiry. This is the first multi-institutional prehabilitation program for frail, older Veterans and represents an essential step toward optimizing surgical care for this vulnerable population.
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Clinical Trial
Oral Care Clinical Trial to Reduce Non-Intensive Care Unit, Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia: Lessons for Future Research.
Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) contributes greatly to patient mortality and healthcare costs. Studies have shown that aggressive oral care in intensive care units (ICUs) can significantly reduce pneumonia rates, and hospitals have implemented stringent protocols in this setting. However, little is known about the effectiveness of aggressive oral care in reducing HAP in non-intensive care wards, prompting us to conduct a nonrandomized controlled clinical trial. ⋯ It became apparent that aggressive toothbrushing program implementation requires nursing-led interdisciplinary involvement, more intensive training, a streamlined documentation system, and efficient compliance tracking. Lessons from this study should be used for future large-scale research. A secondary analysis of these data did, however, suggests that increasing toothbrushing rates may have the potential to reduce pneumonia in the non-ICU acute care setting.
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Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimated that Medicare's Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program (HAC-RP) would reduce hospital payments by $364 million in fiscal year 2016. Although observers have questioned the validity of certain HAC-RP measures, less attention has been paid to the determination of low-performing hospitals (bottom quartile) and the reliability of penalty assignment. This study used publicly available data from CMS's Hospital Compare to simulate the consistency of hospitals' scores and the assignment of penalties under repeated measurement with no change in each hospital's underlying quality. ⋯ The proportion of hospitals statistically different from the threshold showed significant variation by ownership status, teaching status, bed size, and other factors. The simulation further showed that due only to chance, 18.0% of penalized hospitals would escape penalty on repeated measurement. Policymakers should consider alterations to the HAC-RP to improve its reliability.
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Early evidence has shown that Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have achieved some success in improving the quality of care and reducing Medicare costs. However, it has been argued that the ACO rewarding model may disproportionately affect relatively low-spending (LS; considered as efficient) organizations that have fewer options to cut unnecessary services compared with high-spending (HS; inefficient) organizations. ⋯ Specifically, LS-ACOs had better quality performance than HS-ACOs in patient experience/satisfaction (p = .02), preventive care services (p = .004), and hospitalization management (p = .001), whereas HS-ACOs better performed in routine checkup/follow-up (p < .001) and risk population management (p = .048). Our findings indicated that Medicare ACO rewarding model seems to be advantageous for HS-ACOs regardless of the overall quality of care performance.