What is the best metric to measure a hospital?

Policy
November 20, 2013

If you had to pick a single metric to a measure a hospital, which would you choose?

Of course, you can’t boil everything about a hospital down to one, single data point. Defining quality, throughput, and other factors used to evaluate a hospital is difficult business. The Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) tracks dozens of core metrics related to both quality and process, both inpatients and outpatients. As a practicing …

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What is the best metric to measure a hospital?

The primary care opposition to transition care

Physician
November 7, 2013

The lack of access to primary care physicians is a well known problem impacting our healthcare system. The problem sends all sorts of negative ripples through the system, not the least of which is increasingly crowded emergency rooms packed with patients whose conditions could have been addressed earlier and cheaper had primary care been available.

What is less talked about is the mixed reaction of primary care physicians to the kinds …

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The primary care opposition to transition care

Transitional care programs are ripe for innovation

Policy
May 23, 2013

Right now hospitals around the country are being asked to reckon with some stark realities regarding readmissions. $17 billion a year is spent on readmissions for Medicare patients alone, and 75% of those readmissions are considered to be preventable. Of all Medicare patients who are admitted to a hospital, 18 percent will be readmitted in 30 days and of those, 50 percent will not have seen a primary care physician …

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Transitional care programs are ripe for innovation

Technology is being held back from transforming healthcare

Tech
February 24, 2013

Right now, the technology exists to completely transform healthcare.

A doctor should be able to walk into the room where a patient is waiting for them and get everything they need to make an informed decision about that patient’s care.

Location-based technology should sense the doctor approaching and already know which patient is waiting for them. A computer or a tablet in the room should have access to thousands of data points …

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Technology is being held back from transforming healthcare