Welcome to the ACHE Premier Corporate Partner E-Newsletter. This quarterly publication educates ACHE members on healthcare trends, offers solutions to leaders, and shares information about complimentary education and networking opportunities from our Premier Corporate Partners.
ACHE would like to thank our Premier Corporate Partners, who play a critical role in supporting ACHE’s mission to advance our members and healthcare management excellence.
Please note that reference to any specific commercial products, processes or services by a Premier Corporate Partner in this newsletter and featured educational content does not constitute or imply an approval, endorsement, recommendation or referral by ACHE. In addition, the views and opinions expressed in the featured educational content do not necessarily state or reflect those of ACHE.
The articles in this newsletter were submitted by Premier Corporate Partners and are generally published as submitted.
Corporate Partners in This Issue
|
|
At Aramark, we recognize the goal of every hospital is to create and promote a culture that values the patient experience. With a rigorous focus on developing best practices to boost HCAHPS scores, understanding patients’ expectations during their stay, and adopting innovative technologies and programs to improve the bottom line, our mission is to drive value, productivity and quality assurance at your hospital. These resources will help ensure your healthcare system is operating at the highest efficiency levels while providing a superior patient experience:
- Patient Dining: People are dining differently than they did five years ago, and their expectations do not wane during a hospital stay. Don’t let outdated insights about what patients want from their healthcare dining experience affect your satisfaction scores. Discover what hospital patients want in this eye-opening infographic.
- Environmental Services: Patients’ answers to HCAHPS surveys are paramount to the financial health of your healthcare system. Learn how to create a best-in-class environmental services program and receive consistently high marks.
- Retail Dining: Hospital staff and visitors want healthy, convenient options when dining in your hospital café. Implementing new technology for speed of service solutions and restaurant rotations will keep your staff and visitors dining on-site. Discover how Aramark innovates with our partners to improve customer satisfaction, increase revenue and lift nursing scores.
Aramark is proud to sponsor the upcoming ACHE Scottsdale Cluster Feb. 18–21. Watch for special Aramark activities at the Scottsdale Cluster by clicking here.
Diagnostic accuracy of lab tests is critical to patient outcomes. A recent study in the American Journal of Infection Control, however, shows that urine specimen contamination, deterioration and overgrowth are widespread. Unpreserved urine specimens run the risk of contamination or overgrowth, which may lead to unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, Clostridium difficile infections and slower reporting of results.
A 515-bed acute care community teaching hospital in Toronto partnered with BD to change urine test ordering and collection practices in its ED. With 73,000 ED visits annually, the hospital was looking to streamline its urine culture ordering process. It implemented a two-step culture protocol and the BD Vacutainer® closed urine collection system.
This led to a nearly 50 percent decrease in antimicrobial prescriptions for urinary tract infections among admitted patients, a 40 percent reduction in ED patient callback with no untreated UTIs and a 65 percent reduction in ED urinalysis turnaround time, according to results published in the BMJ Quality & Safety journal. Read more about the study here.
You also can access a BD Vacutainer® Urine Collection System presentation
here.
BD is proud to sponsor the upcoming ACHE San Antonio Cluster April 15–18. Watch for special BD activities at the San Antonio Cluster by clicking here.
Cerner Corporation
Consumer expectations about healthcare are rising. Given people’s experiences and interactions with other industries—such as retail, banking and hospitality—they have come to expect a similar, personalized experience in healthcare.
In this blog post, Ray Herschman, vice president of Cerner’s population health accountable care strategy, shares how you can enhance consumer engagement in your organization with a clinically-informed CRM system.
Change Healthcare
Current artificial intelligence can answer specific questions, but it is still a far cry from human intelligence. In most cases, questions evolve around predictions. In the diagnostic world of enterprise imaging, radiologists have been trained extensively to identify disease and are skilled at making efficient predictions, thus limiting the value of AI. In specific cases, algorithms could overcome the intrinsic limitations of human perception, such as skin cancer detection, diabetic retinopathy or difficult-to-discern diseases on chest X-rays. Beyond these instances, the immediate future of AI lies more in aiding medically underserved areas.
However, AI is already far more valuable when its predictions are used to anticipate a need for resources. In this blog post, Philippe Raffy, PhD, executive director, Artificial Intelligence Imaging, Workflow & Care Solutions at Change Healthcare, shares additional insights into the value AI can bring to enterprise imaging.
Optum
Patients go out of network for a variety of reasons. When patients receive their care á la carte—choosing primary care from one organization, then specialty or acute care from unaffiliated care providers—it can create serious challenges for healthcare provider organizations and patients.
What can care provider organizations do to prevent patients from seeking care outside their systems? Organizations like NYUPN—a collaboration between the University Physician Network and NYU Langone Medical Center—increased in-network utilization by patients who were previously seeing nonparticipating physicians by 5 percent. Discover how NYUPN is keeping patients in network using predictive data and analytics by creating a foundation for actionable insights in this topic spotlight and this video.
Roche Diagnostics
Today, fighting infections and managing antibiotic use go hand in hand. By adding procalcitonin testing to lab and treatment protocols, healthcare systems could improve patient outcomes and potentially reduce the costs of care for certain bacterial infections and sepsis while curtailing unnecessary antibiotic use, according to a study published in the September 2009 issue of JAMA.
Bacterial infections, sepsis and antibiotic use present challenges for healthcare institutions. Ambiguous signs and symptoms can make diagnosing and treating sepsis and certain bacterial infections difficult. Additionally, antibiotics, a key treatment option, may have severe medical and financial ramifications when prescribed inappropriately. Numerous statistics underscore these ramifications, including:
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1.7 million adults develop sepsis each year, making sepsis one of the greatest financial burdens on hospitals, according to data from The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.
- Antibiotic misuse accrues $27 billion to $42 billion in avoidable costs each year, according to the National Quality Forum.
Five Rivers Medical Center, Pocahontas, Ark., leveraged PCT testing using Roche’s Elecsys® BRAHMS PCT assay to uncover critical insights into sepsis and reduce use of unnecessary antibiotics. Giving clinicians information to aid in decision-making on antibiotic therapy and provide appropriate treatment sooner, implementing PCT testing helped improve patient outcomes, lowered mortality rates and reduced care costs and unnecessary use of antibiotics.
See the Five Rivers Medical Center case study to learn more about PCT testing and how it can benefit your institution and the patients you serve.
This email was sent from the American College of Healthcare Executives, 300 S. Riverside Plaza, Suite 1900, Chicago, IL 60606-6698.