Hospitals & health networks / AHA
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The data breach at Target last winter put a bright spotlight on IT security. With an increasingly mobile world, hospital leaders must ratchet up their protections.
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Surgery without transfusions saves money, improves patient outcomes, proponents say. So what's holding you back?
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Like meteorologists tracking powerful weather systems, hospital officials have watched uneasily for some time as pressures built. The rising number of uninsured, a nursing shortage, lower reimbursements, and more and sicker hospital patients all brought turbulence. Now a convergence of these and other factors poses a serious challenge to emergency rooms, raising concerns about the stability of the nation's health care delivery system.
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Once maligned for its health care system, the Veterans Administration in recent years has improved the quality of the care it offers, creating a sophisticated electronic medical record and streamlining business processes, such as bed use and prescription drug procurement. Civilian hospitals should take note.
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Insurers are using their purchasing power and their enormous stores of claims data to push hospitals to improve quality. Health plans are able to parse the data according to such quality indicators as cost, length of stay and outcomes. Hospitals are wary of the trend, but some welcome it, especially if insurers use the so-called pay-for-performance model.