The following are recent findings in the quality realm in the last two weeks of December, collected from Becker's coverage and starting with the most recent finding:
1. Engaging patients and their families in care may not have much use as a safety practice, according to research published in theBritish Medical Journal for Quality and Safety.
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2. Preliminary data show more than 80 percent of patients treated for Clostridium difficile are not actually infected, according to a MedPage Today report.
3. Physicians and nurses on after-hours phone consultations may experience significant decision-making and communication problems, according to an article published in theBritish Medical Journal for Quality and Safety.
4. C. diff infection rate data is often biased because of inaccurate reporting, according to research in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
5. On a national level, Medicare patients have good access to physicians, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation issue brief.
6. The cost of treating heart failure patients increased 16.5 percent between 1998 and 2008, with a 5 percent decrease in the one-year mortality rate, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
7. Cardiovascular surgery patients at low-volume hospitals are 57 percent more likely to die from failure to rescue after a major postoperative complication than the same patients at high-volume hospitals, according to a study published in JAMA Surgery.
8. Nonpublic report cards did not effectively reduce in-hospital trauma mortality rates, according to a study published in JAMA Surgery.
9. Pharmacist-led medication reconciliation efforts resulted in higher levels of complete, accurate and up-to-date patient information at hospital admission and discharge, according to preliminary data reported in MedPage Today.
10. The New York State Department of Health's sixth annual report on hospital-acquired infections has documented a continued decline in all infections except C. diff since 2007.
11. Realizing the cost of HAIs may incentivize hospitals to step-up infection control efforts, according to an article published in theJournal of the American Medical Association, which also details costs of individual cases of urinary tract infections, ventilator-associated infections, surgical site infections, C. diff, and bloodstream infections
12. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Hospital Cost Utilization Project found septicemia, the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., rose 32 percent between 2005 and 2010.
13. An experiment allowing patients access to healthcare cost data performed by the California Public Employees Retirement System shows access to cost data may reduce healthcare spending, according to a report from Kaiser Health News.
14. Avoidable readmissions have declined significantly between 2012 and 2013, continuing the second year of declining readmissions, according to data from CMS.
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