Making providers routinely pay attention to cost and quality is widely viewed as crucial if the country is going to rein in its health care spending.
Virginia Mason Medical Center has launched a blog that will focus on quality improvement processes aimed at improving patient safety and cutting costs. The Seattle hospital established a national reputation for quality improvement by adapting “lean” manufacturing techniques to medicine
The purpose of the new center is to evaluate the effectiveness of hospital’s improvement initiatives more rigorously and publish the results in medical journals and other publications.
Swedish Medical Center’s First Hill Hospital and Virginia Mason Medical Center both make the “Top Hospital” list put out each year by The Leapfrog Group, a health-quality improvement group.
Efforts to improve the quality of U.S. health care and reduce medical errors are proving to be disappointingly slow, writes Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in this column. “If you get sick or have surgery, you have only a 3 in 5 chance of getting the care [...]
Drug and alcohol abuse on the rise in Washington state “Abuse of drugs and alcohol is on the rise in Washington state, including one of the highest rates of nonmedical use of prescription pain relievers in the nation, according to the state Department of Social and Health Services,” the Associated Press reports in the Seattle [...]
Puget Sound Health Alliance will release its latest report on how well participating health-care providers are meeting health-care quality standards this Thursday morning, November 13. The Alliance’s Community Checkup report assesses such things as: how well health-care providers do in providing surgical care and heart attack prevention care; how well they manage chronic conditions such as [...]
LocalHealthGuide is a health news and information web service for Seattle and the Puget Sound Region. We are independent and unaffiliated with any hospital, medical association or insurer. If you have questions or if your group has an upcoming event that you would like us to cover, please let us know by going to our "Contact Us" page and dropping us a note. -- Michael McCarthy, Editor
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Lost in translation: Lack of trained interpreters can lead to medical errors
Interpreter services at hospitals and other medical settings are often inadequate, forcing family members, including children, to step in, or the task falls to medical staff members who may not speak the language well.
Some insurers deny ER coverage to people who have been drinking
Laws in more than half the states permit insurers to deny payment for medical services related to alcohol or drug use. Faced with the prospect of not getting paid for care, some ER personnel sidestep the problem by simply not testing patients’ blood or urine for alcohol.
Travel insurance can protect your wallet — and your health on vacation
Think your regular health insurance policy will cover you if you get into medical trouble overseas?
Don’t bet on it.
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