Category: Improving Patient Care

In June 2017, the state’s Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias Acute Care Advisory Committee issued its final report with a goal of outlining strategies to provide optimal care to persons with dementia in acute care settings.

Every 2 minutes someone dies from sepsis in the U.S. – that’s more than from prostate cancer, breast cancer and AIDS combined. Sepsis is a medical emergency in the Commonwealth and the Massachusetts Sepsis Consortium brings together leading experts and advocates from across the state to raise awareness and save lives.

The Massachusetts Sepsis Consortium brings together a group of organizations essential to planning and executing an effective public health response to sepsis. It also provides ongoing strategic direction for statewide initiatives to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of sepsis, and supplies the administrative backbone necessary to sustain progress. The consortium model is well-suited to addressing multifaceted, persistent challenges like sepsis that require the focus of dispersed parties with expertise and authority but whose impact would be limited if acting alone. Read the Massachusetts Sepsis Consortium charter.

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Prepared by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association and Collaborative Healthcare Strategies

Incentives targeting readmission reduction are intended to improve the delivery of care across settings and over time, and to reduce the losses and inefficiencies created by avoidable returns to the hospital.

The public and private sector call for hospitals to reduce readmissions is not new. Incentives targeting readmission reduction are intended to improve the delivery of care across settings and over time, and to reduce the losses and inefficiencies created by avoidable returns to the hospital.

Over the past several years, incentives to reduce readmissions have been introduced into the Massachusetts market in payer- and diagnosis-specific ways. Individually, these incentives have served to stimulate improvements in care for some groups of patients. An unfortunate consequence of payer-specific and diagnosis specific incentives has been the emergence of balkanized efforts to find and serve certain patients with readmission risks – but not others. As a result, readmission rates have not dramatically improved, and the pace of improvement is not quick enough.

It is now clear that financial success under a wide variety of payment models and performance incentives will reward providers for minimizing hospital utilization – whether through population management in accountable care organizations, bundled payments for 90-day episodes of care, or value-based purchasing.

Read the entire report here…

There truly is no place like home, and care in the home holds many potential benefits, including support for person-centered care. Care recipients generally prefer to be at home, where they may have more autonomy than in inpatient settings. Care in the home is not without its challenges, however, and these challenges may affect both care recipients and everyone who supports them. Existing data suggest that preventable harm to care recipients is an important issue in the home setting. In addition, both home care workers and family caregivers may be physically or emotionally harmed as they provide care.

The safety of care provided in the home has not yet received nearly as much attention as patient safety in hospitals and other clinical settings, despite the fact that the home has become the site of care for many people. In 2016, more than 2 million personal care attendants provided care in the home, according to the US Department of Labor, and this number is expected to grow by 40 percent in the next decade.  Care in the home comprises a number of different services, including personal care, home health care, hospice, palliative care, and, through some specialized programs, primary care and hospital-level services. These services are provided by a variety of home care workers with a range of training and expertise. In addition, many aspects of care are provided by family caregivers.

Read the full report here…

The Guide to Improving Patient Safety in Primary Care Settings by Engaging Patients and Families is a resource to help primary care practices partner with patients and their families to improve patient safety. The Guide includes materials and resources to help primary care practices implement patient and family engagement to improve patient safety.

2022 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures is a statistical resource for U.S. data related to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia. Background and context for interpretation of the data are contained in the overview. Additional sections address prevalence, mortality and morbidity, caregiving, and use and costs of health care, long-term care and hospice. The Special Report examines what we have learned about the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease through research, and how we could identify and count the number of people with the disease in the future.