Travel back 100 years, and you will find William Osler, the "father of modern medicine," writing about the physician-patient relationship. The topic isn't new, but it has come into the spotlight in recent years thanks to patients' demands for a more personalized approach to...
Good things come from hospitalist programs. Well-run hospitalist programs produce shorter lengths of stay, better core measure compliance, and more rapid adoption of order sets and protocols. Primary care physicians (PCP) experience an increase in productivity and income after turning over...
According to a recent Office of Inspector General (OIG) report, Hospital Incident Reporting Systems Do Not Capture Most Patient Harm (http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-09-00091.pdf), hospital reporting systems aren’t...
Most of us are familiar with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders. The organization's website states that it is "... committed to bringing quality medical care to people in crisis regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation."
In an effort to improve the accuracy of the data contained within the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) and the Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (HIPDB), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has...
There was a time when medical staff standards seemed simpler and they were all located in one place: the Medical Staff chapter of The Joint Commission's Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH). But things are different today. Standards that apply to the...
Over the past several years, healthcare quality has come under increased scrutiny. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report Crossing the Quality Chasm highlighted the lack of consistency in the quality of care in the American healthcare system. The IOM report showed...
Authority suggests being dictated to. Leadership suggests collaboration. It's been said that physicians will adapt to changes in practice if they get data proving it's the best move for the patient. Banner Health, a 14-hospital system based in Phoenix, is testing that assumption...
Physicians are constantly bombarded with information, and it can be difficult to decide which correspondence to respond to first. You may forget about important e-mails that get buried deep in your inbox, and although you have every intention of responding to voice mails, it's...
