Clinical

In my career I’ve heard many facilities and non-facilities personnel question the value of all the regulations that hospitals have to comply with. I’ve actually heard staff say, “We’ve never had a fire, so our safety systems are working.” I’m sure Jazan General Hospital in Saudi Arabia, which burned in December 2015, generally felt the same way prior to their fire.   The loss More

Elizabeth, or Libby as her friends and family call her, has been a fighter her entire life. Born with kidney and lung problems, her battle began very early. Doctors in the neonatal intensive care unit didn’t expect Libby to go home but eventually she did. After several months of home dialysis, special food preparation and challenging care, Libby was strong enough to receive one of her mother’s kidneys. More

Maybe you’ve heard of blood poisoning, which is a common lay term for sepsis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) answers the question “What is sepsis?” in simple and easy-to-understand language: More

There’s a lot happening in traditional Medicare alternative payment model (APM) development and evolution. Because we recently passed the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI Advanced) application deadline on June 24 and the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) notice of intent to apply (NOIA) deadline on June 28, I want to remind organizations of the various programs and their associated deadlines, as well as the opportunity (or lack thereof) for entry. Let’s... More

Whether an organization calls it governance or refers to it as oversight, leaves it to a steering committee or keeps it within a traditional value analysis structure, the goal is the same: create an informed, clinically driven process at the physician level for patient-centric decisions that are implemented at the organizational level. Or in some cases not implemented. More

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of current events in our country is the increase in mass violence. And unfortunately, the health care environment is not immune to societal trends. More

Nurses, we’ve all been there: our first day on the floor as a new graduate nurse. I remember mine. Six-thirty in the morning, walking onto the cardiac unit with a slightly nauseous feeling, hoping that my preceptor would be nice, that I wouldn’t make any mistakes, and that I would appear to actually know something. Little did I know that first day would be easy compared to some that would follow. More

The month of May, named after Maia, the goddess of fertility – along with the goddess of spring and growth – is the perfect time to remind the women we love how important it is to stay healthy – and not just because we celebrate Mother’s Day. The month is chock full of female-friendly observances designed to ensure that women keep their health top of mind.    More

As we celebrate National Nurses Week, I reflect on this past year and my professional and personal experience in assisting the new graduate RN on the journey to becoming a professional, skilled nurse.  More

In a previous blog, one of my colleagues shared information about CMS adding a second cohort to Bundled Payment for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI Advanced), and the addition of outpatient total knee arthroplasty to this voluntary program, which provides utilization and spend data for hospitalization plus 90 days of the episode. The application period for the second cohort opened on April 24 and will only be open until June 24. More