While a quality improvement tool helped hospitals respond to external incentive programs, several challenges impeded optimal use of the tool, according to a study in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

CMS announced a new Medicare Chronic Conditions Dashboard to provide researchers, physicians, public health professionals and policymakers data on the geographic spread, required services and costs for beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.

Post-discharge communication between inpatient and outpatient providers may not in itself improve 30-day hospital readmission rates, according to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The number of hospital stays for acute and unspecified renal failure was the most rapidly growing condition between 1997 and 2010, according to a statistical brief from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research…

Maintaining relationships with physicians is an integral component leading to a hospital's current and future financial success. "The only ones who admit patients and provide mainstream revenue to hospitals is the medical staff," says Joseph DeSilva, FACHE, partner at The…

Healthcare needs a new framework of patient experience to understand experience as a complex concept that goes beyond just satisfaction, according to a Press Ganey report.

More than 70 percent of nurse practitioners and physician assistants are satisfied with their jobs, according to a recent Jackson Healthcare survey, Advanced Practice Trends 2012-2013: An Attitude and Outlook Report on Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants.

The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform has issued 12 recommendations for models to pay healthcare providers that maximize positive clinical outcomes, enhance patient satisfaction and physician autonomy and incentivize cost-effective care.

The recent enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act served as a call to action for health plans to tackle the tremendous cost pressures facing healthcare (which are not directly addressed by the legislation) and to take on…

While the rate of healthcare-associated infections in patients after a major cancer surgery increased from 1999 to 2009, the HAI-associated mortality rate decreased, according to a study in Cancer.