1. Hospitals participating in the Minnesota Reducing Avoidable Readmissions Effectively Campaign prevented 4,570 readmissions in 2012, saving an estimated $40 million.
Sign up for our FREE E-Weekly for more coverage like this sent to your inbox!
2. Central line-associated bloodstream infections may increase a hospital’s margins, creating a disincentive to reduce these infections, according to a study in American Journal of Medical Quality.
3. Patient participation in healthcare decisions is associated with higher costs and increased lengths of stay, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
4. Increasing hand hygiene compliance in a children’s hospital neonatal intensive care unit reduced methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus acquisition 48 percent, leading to a savings of $66,397 in hospital charges per month, according to a study in American Journal of Infection Control.
5. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may be over-diagnosed among uninsured patients, unnecessarily increasing cost of care, according to a study presented at the 2013 American Thoracic Society International Conference.
6. Mass spectrometry technology combined with antimicrobial stewardship reduced length of stay and hospital costs for patients with gram-negative bloodstream infections, according to a study in Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.
7. Improving nurse communication can potentially affect 15 percent of hospitals’ value-based purchasing incentive payments, according to a Press Ganey report.
8. Emergency department visits for urinary tract infections result in almost $4 billion per year in unnecessary healthcare costs, according to a study published in Infection Control Today.
9. Boston Children’s Hospital set out to reduce clinical variation in treatments for pediatric chest pain through a “standardized clinical assessment and management plan,” which has been found to reduce the cost per episode of care by 20 percent and has also earned positive reviews from physicians, according to a report from Health Affairs.
10. Clostridium difficile infection developed in a hospital may increase costs more than $6,000 compared with patients without CDI, according to a study in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
