Here are five things to know:
1. While members of the quality team at Stanford Health Care state they are addressing concerns by creating the Center for Advancing Patient Safety and utilizing new cleaning methods, other members of the Stanford community still believe that more improvements are needed.
2. In December 2015, Medicare announced it was penalizing Stanford Health Care for poor patient safety. Medicare is lowering its payments to SHC by 1 percent over the course of the fiscal year, ending in September 2016.
3. The hospital-acquired conditions in the Medicare assessment include blood clots, falls and sepsis.
4. Raj Behal, the chief quality officer of SHC, claimed the rankings do not adequately address the complexity of Stanford’s patients and needs. For example, more than half of major teaching hospitals were penalized by Medicare, compared to 22 percent of hospitals overall.
5. While the penalty associated with Stanford’s poor Medicare score is a 1 percent reduction in Medicare payments, Mr. Behal said this will not affect any programs or services provided by SHC.
More articles on quality & infection control:
CMS, payers reach consensus on how to measure physician quality — 5 points
Unreported, preventable medical errors may cost thousands of Iowans their lives — 4 notes
Montana State researchers study new method for stopping virus transmission: 5 takeaways
