Policymakers who hope to see hospitals respond to financial incentives for better quality care will be disappointed by a newly published report on costly, potentially deadly, hospital-acquired infections.
My colleague Maureen McKinney reported on the results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine: The 2008 Medicare policy to stop payment for catheter-associated bloodstream and urinary tract infections contracted by patients during a hospital stay did not produce a hoped-for drop in infection rates.
The rate of bloodstream infections, on the decline before the policy change, continued to drop at about the same pace as before the pay cut, the researcher said.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced plans to spend up to $1.2 million on case studies of private-market accountable care organizations.
The foundation said it would award up to $400,000 each for as many as three projects to study how markets may help or hinder accountable care organizations and ACO results in four areas: quality, cost, patient experience and health disparities.
To qualify as an accountable care organization in the study, an ACO must operate in the private market.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Here's an interesting new business line from one widely known health system: Geisinger Health System will seek to market downloadable quality and efficiency applications as part of the organization's new research, development and evaluation center.
The new Geisinger Center for Health Care Transformation will organize and prioritize research under way at the Danville, Pa.-based system in conjunction with app development, said Dr. Earl Steinberg, who joined Geisinger nearly a year ago as executive vice president of innovation and dissemination. “We're going to concentrate in areas where we have strengths,” he said.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
