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...
The Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (HCQIA) was created to provide immunity from monetary damages to hospitals and individual practitioners participating on medical peer review committees. HCQIA also created the National Practitioner Data Bank.
Many clients have asked me about appropriate privileging for telemedicine providers. This is a regulatory issue, and the most common regulatory agencies, The Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), have not been in sync with their requirements....
