Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and prioritizing, risks of all kinds (whatisriskmangement.net, 2011). So what role does risk management play in healthcare? Any event that may cause an adverse effect on the healthcare facilities ability to perform is considered to be a risk. Risk management in healthcare may be the key for many organizations to reduce costs, improve surveys, reduce negative events, and have a lower professional liability cost. The Joint Commission (2012) defines risk management in healthcare as “the clinical and administrative acts undertaken to identify and evaluate the risk of injury to staff, patients and visitors and the risk to loss of the organization itself”.
Sepsis Critical Appraisal Problem Statement: Sepsis is a syndrome caused by systemic inflammatory response of the individual in an uncontrolled way with an infection. When there is delay in diagnosis, the clinical picture of a patient can worsen rapidly. Typically signs of sepsis manifest with nonspecific and subtle changes in vital signs such as tachypnea, tachycardia, or fever. Sepsis is the leading cause of non-cardiac related intensive care unit mortalities due to the multiple organ dysfunctions that can occur from sepsis (Saggy, 2013). It is estimated that ten percent of intensive care unit beds comprise of septic patients.
As these programs are developed strategies and standards are addressed and barriers identified to ensure success of preventing falls. Falls are a serious concern among the elderly population, and a major concern within the health care community. Falls are the most adverse event reported in hospitals and are leading cause of death in patients 65 years or older. Nation-wide the average rate for a first fall range from 2.2 to 3.6 per 1000 patient days. Litigations related to hospital falls is growing in both frequency and severity; hospital administrators are in a quandary on how to reduce patient falls.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss data associated with falls, and identify risks and prevention strategies. Analysis of the data As the population continues to age, falls among the elderly are of great concern. It is important for healthcare facilities to implement dashboards to help improve performances of their facility and staff and to monitor patients who may be at risk for falls. The Sinai inpatient rehab unit used the National Data of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) to help measure nurse sensitive quality indicators such as falls. Falls are important to be monitored due to rising cost of care for patients who have fallen, and this will help decrease the chance of harm to patients.
For example a doctor may take blood pressure and the heart rate of a patient and use it to find a treatment. Another reason why research is useful to Health and Social Care is highlighting gaps in provision. The Health and Social care needs of the community can rise and fall. Government and local authorities then use research to gather data on a local and national scale. They use this research to monitor that the services provided are acceptable.
The conventional treatments for hypertension revolve around medication that will reduce the risk of stroke, kidney failure and heart failure. The use of hypnotherapy to compliment these conventional treatments and the type of therapies that could be used is considered in this paper. However, it is important that the client does not see hypnotherapy as an alternative to their prescribed conventional treatment as serious problems can arise if the client stops the medication. What is meant by high blood pressure? When a doctor checks a patient’s blood pressure, he is measuring how strongly blood presses against the walls of the arteries as it is pumped around your body by the heart.
A third common coding and billing error is billing for non-covered services or billing over-limit services. The insurance specialists need to make sure he or she is billing for services that are covered and also needs to make sure they are not billing for over-limit services. The effect the Medicare National Correct Coding Initiative has on the billing and coding process is that it controls improper coding that leads to inappropriate payment for Medicare claims. CCI had coding policies that are based on coding conventions in CPT, Medicare nation and local coverage and payment policies, national medical societies’ coding guidelines, and Medicare’s analysis of standard medical and surgical practice (Valerius, Bayes, Newby, & Seggern, 2008). CCI also offers edits, which are used by computers in the Medicare system to check claims.
Improvement of patient safety consists of evaluating how patients may be injured, deterring and managing risks, recording and investigating incidents, learning from such incidents and implementing solutions to reduce the possibility of them reoccurring (Great Britain. Department of Health, 2011). It is estimated that at approximately 300,000 patients are affected by HAIs annually in the UK. This is a significant, yet avoidable liability for the healthcare system. There is evidence to suggest that HAIs are principally transmitted via the hands of Healthcare workers (HCWs); therefore hand hygiene has been identified as the most effective factor in preventing the spread of HAIs (Pittet el al., 2010).
“Hospital-acquired infection” (HAI) is a serious and prevalent issue in today’s healthcare field. The Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital finds this issue to be grave and is doing all that they can to eradicate HAI for good. Hospital-acquired infections are infections that come about during the course of the hospitalization and treatment, but were not present when the patient was admitted to the hospital. According to the CDC, hospital-acquired infections show up “48 to 72 hours after admission or 10 days after discharge” (Collins, n.d.). The reason for this window of time for the infection to develop is because hospitals try to have the duration of hospital stays decreased.
Root Cause Analysis of a Case Study Alice Holliday Western Governors University Organizational Systems and Quality Leadership RTT1 Root Cause Analysis of a Case Study Healthcare presents numerous opportunities for patients to be helped by healthcare personnel. Unfortunately, there are also numerous opportunities for patients to be failed by healthcare personnel. When patients are failed by healthcare personnel, it is required by the Joint Commission for hospitals to carry out a Root Cause Analysis in order to understand the systems within the organization that failed so that improvements can be made and the failures can be prevented from happening in the future. (Cherry & Jacob, 2011) This paper will describe how a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) can be used following the death of a patient, and how Change Theory and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) can be utilized to come up with ways to prevent the failure from being repeated. A. Root Cause Analysis A Root Cause Analysis is an organized process used to determine the processes that lead to sentinel events.