Caregiver Support May Help Reduce Costs
Family caregivers’ fatigue was associated with $1,937 higher costs while caregiver sadness was associated with $1,323 higher costs during a six-month period. Patients with severely fatigued caregivers also were more likely to visit the ED.
Leading Hospitals Turn to Advanced Strategies for Pharmacy Savings
Organizations like Froedtert Health and Intermountain Healthcare are working on both internal and collaborative strategies to reduce pharmacy costs and improve clinical care.
Care Navigators: A Mini Case Study
Care navigators facilitate hospital discharge and patient follow-ups with the goal of improved outcomes.
Rising At-Risk Populations
Almost 84 million people out of a total population of 400 million, will be covered by Medicaid or Medicare by 2050.
Flu Vaccine Helps Avoid More than 70,000 Hospitalizations
CDC estimates that if vaccination rates increased by just 5 percentage points across the entire population, another 6,000 influenza-associated hospitalizations could have been avoided.
Care Navigators Offer Cost-Effective Solution for Improving Value-Based Care
Targeted interventions by care navigators can make a big difference in population health and patient satisfaction without a big cost.
Hospital COPD Bundle Curbs Costly Readmissions
University of Cincinnati Medical Center used improvement science to develop and implement a ‘COPD care bundle’ for COPD patients who are often readmitted due to care-delivery failures.
Rethinking Care Management at the Front End
Sean Angert notes that, by re-envisioning and enhancing front-end care management, health systems can take a more comprehensive approach to address the dual challenge of assigning patients to the appropriate care setting while also preventing unnecessary visits.
YEAH! Childhood Obesity Is a Preventable Problem
Jean Mutchie and Amy Walters write about a program at St. Luke’s Children’s that addresses the underlying issues in the fight against childhood obesity.
UI Health Cuts ED Homeless Patient Costs by 45 Percent
The Illinois public hospital pays $1,000 per patient per month to an outside agency to house 27 homeless patients in furnished, one-bedroom apartments. This investment is significantly less than the nearly $3,000 per patient per day that UI Health and managed care organizations were spending on some chronically homeless patients.