NQF Standards

From Modern Healthcare:

The National Quality Forum has added 10 standards for hospital-based emergency department care, 17 perinatal-care measures, eight outpatient-imaging efficiency measures and two hospital readmission measures to the group’s national voluntary consensus standards program. The standards are intended to improve accountability, efficiency and appropriateness, and quality across the various areas of care.

In addition, the standards-development organization endorsed a Web-based toolkit that collects race, ethnicity and language data from patients. The toolkit, designed by the Health Research & Educational Trust, is part of the NQF’s ongoing project to approve a framework for addressing cultural competency among providers.

Medical Practices: Increasing Costs Outpacing Revenue

From the MGMA:

Compounding economic pressures created by declining reimbursement and crushing administrative burdens, operating costs rose faster than revenue in many medical group practices in 2007, according to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Cost Survey: 2008 Reports Based on 2007 Data. MGMA data indicate that over the past decade, operating expenses have risen from 58 cents to 61 cents per dollar of revenue.

Multispecialty group practices reported a 5.5 percent increase in median total revenue; median operating costs increased by 6.5 percent. Many single-specialty practices reported a similar trend. For example, cardiology practices’ median total medical revenue decreased 0.61 percent while their operating costs rose 6.3 percent. Family practice, OB/GYN, pediatrics and orthopedic surgery groups reported like conditions.

More on ED Wait Times from ACEP Symposium

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:

You know those signs at amusement parks that tell you how long the wait is for the big roller coaster? As it turns out, they tend to tell you the wait is a little longer than it’s really likely to be. That way, the chances are you won’t be disappointed when you finally do hop on board.

A group of Michigan doctors figured out that the same strategy makes patients feel better about their trip through the emergency room.

Basically, the docs calculated the mean time it took to get through the ER for a given test or procedure — then added 20% when they told patients what to expect. In a standard patient satisfaction survey, all nine variables related to wait times improved after the ER adopted this policy (the improvement was statistically significant for five of the variables).

How Long Will Patients Spend In the ER Before They Get Mad?

Reporting from the ACEP Scientific Symposium (I just got back. It was great!) from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:

The longer it takes for a patient to get through the emergency room, the less happy the patient’s going to be with the experience. But how long is too long?

The docs, from Beaumont Hospital in Troy, Michigan, looked at more than 2,000 patient-satisfaction surveys from the first part of 2007. They found that patients whose stays in the ER lasted up to three and a half hours had satisfaction scores in the 83rd percentile as compared with patients at comparable ERs around the country.

But for those who spent between three and a half and four hours, satisfaction plunged to the 49th percentile. And those who spent more than four hours had an average satisfaction score in the 24th percentile. The analysis looked only at patients who were sent home, and excluded those who were sick enough to be admitted to the hospital.

“I was surprised that they’re so patient for three and a half hours,” Aveh Bastani, the ER doc who led the study, told the Health Blog. “Three and a half hours when you’re not feeling well is a long time.”

Bastani presented the results this week at the American College of Emergency Physicians meeting in Chicago.

GruntDoc: “Newsflash: Transportation is Dangerous”

An insightful summary and comments on recent regulatory oversight and reportage pertaining to air medical (and ground) EMS transport from GruntDoc.