Tag: Quality

December 11, 2019

It comes as a surprise that the prime cause of death for ill people in developing countries is not the lack of access to medical care. According to a paper published by The Lancet Global Health Commission, more people die […]

June 5, 2017

Researchers seeking the “secret” to patient satisfaction may have unearthed it: Effective, empathetic communication with patients makes them much more satisfied with their care experience. Researchers at Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas, delved into patient experience surveys and found that patients […]

February 23, 2017

Health systems or hospitals that actively collect patient reviews and publish them may reap a number of rewards from the practice. Vivian Lee, M.D., CEO of University of Utah Health Care, wrote in a column for STAT that embracing patient reviews has […]

November 10, 2016

Traditionally, hip fractures were seen as less critical injuries for patients, and hospitals would push surgeries back several days. The logic was this gave patients time to prepare for the procedure. But due to research, this opinion is slowly changing, […]

November 3, 2016

The industry-wide movement from volume- to value-based care and alternative payment models will require organizations to find new ways to increase productivity. “Increasing productivity is a survival skill in healthcare today,” writes healthcare futurist Joe Flower in a post for […]

October 24, 2016

To deliver the highest quality care possible, healthcare leaders and board members must focus on 10 key metrics. The measures were deemed the most useful to healthcare executives surveyed by Press Ganey and included in a new whitepaper: Inpatients’ rating of nurse […]

October 21, 2016

As healthcare merger-mania continues, hospitals and systems that are coming together must unite at all levels–starting with the board room and C-suite. Each party in the merger brings its own C-suite members and leadership, and uniting those teams can be […]

August 25, 2016

Smoking rates are higher among adults who live below the poverty level or who never attended college. Wealthy women are more likely to receive screening mammograms than women at other income levels. Adult obesity rates are noticeably higher among African-Americans […]

August 24, 2016

Communication problems have long been a source of medical errors, and a new study offers a simple solution for how providers can combat the issue: speak up. Researchers, led by Ahmet Nacioglu, a Ph.D. candidate in public health at the […]

August 22, 2016

Architect Bruce Knepper designs healthcare facilities for a living, but in a blog for his company’s website, he wrote that he gained valuable insight about the patient experience after he was admitted to a hospital he helped to create. Knepper, Stantec’s vice […]

August 4, 2016

Hospital rankings have dominated the news the last week, from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ star ratings to U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of the nation’s best hospitals. But consumers shouldn’t take any of the assessments as […]

February 16, 2016

This fall, athenahealth convened live polling discussions with 60 leaders of hospitals, health systems, and independent medical groups at advisory roundtables in California, Massachusetts and Washington, DC. The goal: to assess the current state of population health management while distilling […]

April 15, 2015

Trust has always been essential to medical care. Of what use are the best communication skills, physician empathy, or clinical knowledge if patients don’t trust the advice and information that their doctors give them? Even the most psychologically disturbed or […]