Senate confirms Tavenner to lead CMS
T
he Senate on Wednesday confirmed Marilyn Tavenner as the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. She has served as acting CMS administrator since late 2010 and now is the first confirmed leader of the agency in more than nine years.Tavenner had the backing of several medical groups, including the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Read more...
Reality check: Coordinated care is a daunting task
This week, FieceHealthcare reported on healthcare's "dirty little secret" about coordinated care: it's not very well coordinated and no one is responsible for it.The "secret" was aired in a Kaiser Health News/Washington Post article, in which hospital patient advocates bemoaned confusion about who is managing a patient's care, provider miscommunications, unsafe hospitalist workloads and lack of coordination among caregivers.
And exacerbating that lack of coordination is the fact that most physicians need more help than is currently available to create and sustain team-based care--key to implementing coordinated care plans.
Such reports make me worry that healthcare's "little secret" isn't all that little. Read more...
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TOP HEADLINES
Column: Partners dominates Massachusetts market due to docs, not hospitals
Partners HealthCare dominates the Massachusetts healthcare market because of its large physician network, as opposed to its number of hospitals, John McDonough wrote in a Health Stew column on Boston.com.
Whistleblower blasts Bayonne Medical Center for unqualified supervisor
A jury awarded a former Bayonne (N.J.) Medical Center employee more than $2.1 million after filing a whistleblower suit against the hospital over improper staffing, the Jersey Journal reported.
Hospitals' cardiac arrest cases linked to survival rates
Hospitals with the highest rates of cardiac arrests tend to have the poorest survival rates for those cases, according to a study conducted by the University of Michigan Health System.
Patient outcomes unaffected by nighttime ICU docs
Although a third of the nation's academic hospitals use intensivist staffing at night to help improve outcomes, nighttime intensivists don't benefit patients and may unnecessarily increase costs, according to a study published online yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Hospitals that predominantly treat black patients provide poor trauma care
A study in Health Services Research finds hospitals that predominately treat black patients provide poor care to trauma victims.
From Our Sister Sites
Relationships between physicians and pharmaceutical representatives, according to some, have strayed from their original purpose, which was to keep doctors up-to-date on new medications that could...
The Colorado Department of Corrections and Denver Health Medical Center are gearing up for the launch next month of a telemedicine pilot for treating inmates.
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