hospital quality
CMS P4P program shows improvements
Hospital costs and mortality rates are going down under CMS's pay-for-performance project, according to a new analysis. Under the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration project, which began in... Read more...
Seattle-area healthcare "checkup" finds deficiencies
A Seattle-area health alliance has conducted what it calls a "community checkup," examining care for more than 1.6 million patients--and concluded that performance was below current standards on many... Read more...
Unclear on how hospital data affects decisions
While public policy is very much in favor of providing detailed data on hospital performance and quality, there's little evidence to suggest that this data actually affects patient decisions,... Read more...
Progress slow on hospital data in IL
When advocates vent over the slow adoption of consumer-driven healthcare spending, one place they should look is Illinois. The problems encountered there in becoming a more consumer-driven health... Read more...
Critical-access hospitals not part of CMS quality program
Raising some hackles, CMS has made the decision to exclude critical-access hospitals from its Hospital Outpatient Quality Data Reporting program. The program, which kicks off in April 2008, will... Read more...
CMS program would base hospital pay on performance
CMS is proposing a new quality-reporting program which would cut Medicare payments to hospitals, but give money back if the hospitals performed well on the agency's quality measures. The new... Read more...
Senate prods CMS on value-based purchasing, SCHIP
Senate leaders are pushing to get a pending report from CMS regarding hospital value-based purchasing and another on the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana) and... Read more...
CMS seeks rural hospitals for gainsharing program
CMS has begun recruiting rural hospitals for a demonstration project which will examine the impact of gainsharing projects on such hospitals. (Gainsharing refers to programs under which hospitals pay physicians a share of any savings generated by mutual quality and efficiency-improvement efforts.) Under the gainsharing program, the hospitals will be asked to provide their own measures of whether they've managed to improve quality and efficiency of care for Medicare beneficiaries. The …
... Read more...Study:Medicare P4P doesn't boost hospital quality
While Medicare's new pay-for-performance program may have some effect on hospital quality, the financial incentives don't have any bigger impact than a hospital's voluntary improvement efforts, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, which looked at data from 54 hospitals in the Medicare P4P program, found that most improved on some important criteria during the test, for example by prescribing aspirin more frequently for …
... Read more...MD companies push Leapfrog participation
Quality measures abound in the hospital industry, and each has their virtues. This time, though, Maryland employers have focused in on a set they like, and they've begun a campaign to get hospitals on board. Baltimore and D.C.-area companies, including Lockheed Martin and Marriott, are pushing a group of 46 regional hospitals to participate in the Leapfrog Group's annual hospital quality and safety survey. The surveys, which are progressing in 32 other markets, measure progress in …
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