May 6-12 is Nurses' Week, and this year's theme is "Ethical Practice, Quality Care." We hope that you use this time to celebrate with colleagues and friends and recognize the difference that nurses make at your organization. For more information on Nurses' Week, visit the American Nurses Association website.
More than 75 data elements are included in the final report including average case loads, salary ranges, and scope of services/functions. Survey data is used by members in organizations nationwide for benchmarking, resource justification and practice improvement.
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The Senate Finance Committee is scouting for ideas that might break a massive logjam of denied Medicare claims appealed by providers and suppliers. The backlog now exceeds 500,000 cases across the first three of five levels of appeal for denied claims, Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said during a hearing that included testimony from claims administrators and the CMS' Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals.
The AHA and three hospitals told a federal district court that the only relief sufficient to resolve the Department of Health and Human Services' violations of the statutory deadlines for timely administrative review of Medicare claims denials and provide hospitals with their indisputable rights under the Medicare Act is the court's order of mandamus to compel the agency to comply with the mandatory deadlines.
While some hospitals use the old-fashioned concept of the house call to provide better post-discharge care, other organizations take the idea even further by treating certain patients entirely from the comfort of their homes, according to post on the New York Times' Well blog. New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital is one such organization, as it allows patients like Martin Fernandez, an 82-year-old who lives on the Upper West Side, to receive treatment outside of a traditional hospital setting.
In response to the new healthcare reality of a consumer-driven market, many hospital and systems undertake new initiatives, including partnering with competitors to increase access to services, helping patients transition from primary care practices to medical homes, providing new access points for urgent care and using technology to improve access to healthcare and the overall patient experience.
As mental health professionals, policy makers and advocates focus on taking steps to mend the fragmented mental health care system, the role of patients and their friends and families is sometimes overlooked. That's why the American Psychiatric Association is releasing a first-of-its-kind book to decode in plain English the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — a guide for mental health providers that is also used to determine insurance coverage. The resource, Understanding Mental Disorders: Your Guide To DSM-5, includes in-depth explanations of risk factors, symptoms and symptom management, treatment options and success stories.
Data-driven and value-based decision making is here to stay, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been one of the drivers of this change in healthcare. The new CMS Physician Quality Reporting Programs Strategic Vision will help them to evolve, making better use of data collected and adding value for their stakeholders. The Strategic Vision describes how CMS will build upon current successes in quality measurement and public reporting, and it presents a future state for their programs to strive toward over the next several years.
Staffing shortages and turnover problems have become two of healthcare's biggest problems. Not only is finding quality talent a problem, keeping it is, causing concerns for hiring managers and recruiters in the current healthcare economy. Experts offer a few tips for retaining staff.
Each year, Nurses Week begins on May 6 and runs through May 12, Florence Nightingale's birthday. This is a week where the worker bees of the healthcare world get some time in the spotlight. Many nurses look forward to the week of gifts, praises and a reminder of the greatness of nursing. But how did all this celebrating actually originate?
Republicans are shifting their line of attack on ObamaCare, abandoning assertions that few people are taking advantage of the law for new arguments that enrollees are getting stuck with low-quality insurance plans. Republicans initially argued the Affordable Care Act had not made a dent in the size of the uninsured population. Speaker John Boehner said in March 2014 that the law had led to "a net loss of people with health insurance" because of canceled plans.