AHA Issues Guide for Improving the Patient Experience through the Physical Environment

One way for hospitals to improve patient satisfaction is to focus on their physical environment, according to a new guide by the AHA's Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence initiative and American Society for Healthcare Engineering. Read More    

Hospitals Eye Community Health Workers to Cultivate Patients' Successes

Donnie Missouri, 58, doesn't have medical training. He started his health career in the linens department in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Read More

Federal Agency Offers $15 Million to Support Aging In Place

In yet another move signaling the federal government's intention to increase home health services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is making $15 million available to test a new model to help seniors age in place. Read More    

States Find It Hard and Expensive to Coordinate Care for Duals

States say it's harder and more expensive than initially predicted to coordinate care for the roughly 9 million people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. Read More  

Location, Location, Location May Impact Hospital Readmission Rates

The socio-economic status of patients in a given community may explain some of the variation in hospital 30-day readmission rates. Read More

At the Hospital, Better Responses to Those Beeping Alarms

In hospitals, alarms on patient-monitoring devices create a cacophony of noise day and night-beeping, pinging and ringing so often that doctors and nurses ignore them, turn them off or just stop hearing them. Read More

Just as there are different kinds of patients, there are different kinds of hospitals. Kindred Transitional Care Hospitals provide a wide range of services to help patients with complex medical issues who need additional recovery time after a stay at a traditional hospital. While every patient receives individualized care from a team of healthcare professionals, our goal is for each person to reach the highest level of recovery before discharge.

With our Direct Admit Program, physicians can admit medically complex patients from short-term acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health and other service providers directly to a Kindred Hospital. We work directly with physicians to make sure their patients have a smooth transition into our hospitals and the highest level of care continuity to prevent future readmissions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYp9UW5pTwI

What are care management’s best practices at this early stage in its existence? This question was answered by William Mills, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Kindred at Home and Vice President of Medical Affairs for Kindred’s new Division of Care Management, during a break-out session at Kindred’s Fifth Annual Clinical Impact Symposium.

There’s no doubt that readmissions to acute care hospitals are costing the healthcare system a lot of money, and the patients who cost the system the most might fit a profile like this:

Patients like this typically see anywhere from two to ten doctors regularly. They have no home support, so when a crisis arises, 911 is called and the patient is taken to the emergency room, which leads to a hospital stay eight out of ten times, Dr. Mills said. Rehabilitation and a long-term care stay follow, then home care and then the cycle recurs.

For patients like this, wouldn’t it make more sense to deliver care in the home setting?

Did you know that a pharmacist invented Coca Cola? This was just one interesting fact divulged by Kindred Hospital Division Vice President of Pharmacy James Poullard, who presented this afternoon at Kindred’s Fifth Annual Clinical Impact Symposium.

For Coke lovers, this fact makes pharmacists critical. But more importantly, pharmacists play a crucial role in effective care transitions.

Pharmacy – the science and technique of preparing and dispensing drugs and medicines – has undergone a transformation over the years, according to Poullard.

“We’ve gone from pouring sodas and mixing elixirs to now being the medication expert in retail outlets, and in the inpatient arena,” he said. “There are now post-graduate residency programs and we’ve become an integral part of the patient care team.”

And pharmacists have their work cut out for them.

James Poullard, Vice President of Pharmacy, Hospital Division

Kindred’s Transitional Care Hospitals play a vital role in the recovery process for the sickest and most medically complex patients who require aggressive medical care and rehabilitation over a longer period of time. For patients who have complex ventilator needs, multi-organ system failure or complicated medical problems that are very difficult to treat, transitional care hospitals may represent the first important step necessary to make recovery and return home possible.

These hospitals are licensed as general acute hospitals, often featuring such familiar elements as Intensive Care Units (ICUs), operating rooms and on-site laboratory and radiology services, but they also are distinguished by an additional Medicare certification that recognizes the need for extended recovery periods.

and keeping patients on the road to recovery at the highest level of function possible. As such, Kindred works with chronic-acute patients before they’re discharged to anticipate concerns they might have after they leave and to educate them about medicine management, wound care, follow-up care, caregiver issues and other aspects of their disease process.

“If patients don’t understand what’s happening to them, they panic and bounce back to the hospital,” says Beth Hock, Chief Clinical Officer, Kindred Hospital Dayton and 2013 President’s Award Winner. “Kindred nurses constantly talk about what they’re doing as another way of training patients about their condition.”

Kindred Hospital Dayton also recently took patient education to a whole new level with a 48-year-old woman who suffered a spinal injury that left her a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic.