QIO News Posts
Improving Blood Pressure Control Rates – A Team Approach
The Grand Island Clinic in Grand Island, Nebraska is a multi-specialty group practice with 18 providers. The team at the Grand Island Clinic set out to improve the Blood Pressure (BP) control rates of their patients. The clinic team had been monitoring performance of...
Study Finds Many Avoid End-of-Life Care Planning
Kaiser Health News recently reported that despite promotion to encourage end-of-life advance directives, only about a third of U.S. adults have them, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs. That number is higher with people over 65 making advance...
Spread the Love…Not the Disease
August is National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM). NIAM highlights the need for improving national immunization levels and encourages all people to protect their health by getting immunized against infectious diseases. The observance is a great way to promote...
Toolkit Helps Drive Community Health in Rural Areas
The American Hospital Association (AHA) recently released a toolkit to improve community health and patient outreach in rural areas and vulnerable urban areas. Access the toolkit As value-based care continues to take hold, health systems are making more of a concerted...
Study Shows Lowering Readmission Rates Does Not Reduce Quality or Safety
As hospitals continue to lower readmission rates and satisfy new value-based incentives, mortality rates have also dropped, signaling improvement in care quality. A new study published in JAMA analyzed about 5 million Medicare fee-for-service hospitalizations between...
The Opioid Epidemic – How Does Your State Fare?
A new interactive map from AHRQ allows users to explore state-specific information about opioid-related hospital stays. Users may find, for example: Between 2005 and 2014, the national rate of opioid-related inpatient stays increased 64.1 percent and the national rate...
GOOD News for Skilled Nursing Facilities
The new payment rule posted Monday by CMS has skilled nursing facilities obtaining a 1% federal payment rise; an increase of $370 million. This increase is for all post-acute providers and was mandated by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. The...
Which Hospital Metrics Should We Give Our Attention?
There is much data to help patients decide on a hospital. But, which data is valuable and worth your attention? How do we compare two hospitals with different patient demographics in different locations? Are we making fair comparisons? A recent study by health...
Nebraska Critical Access Hospital Program Receives National Recognition
The Critical Access Hospital (CAH) program in Nebraska was recently recognized for outstanding quality performance. Ten states, including Nebraska, were identified as ‘top-performing’ states; others included Wisconsin, Maine, Utah, Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania...
CDC Reports Half of Americans Have Diabetes or Are at High Risk
100 million people in the United States have diabetes or prediabetes and this number is growing. The CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation (DDT) recently released the newest National Diabetes Statistics Report, which highlights current data on diabetes incidence and...