Compassion fatigue leads to fear or panic at the prospect of dealing with a patient's or client's trauma, Harris says, and dread of what the next patient encounter will bring. Vicarious trauma – a health provider experiencing patients' suffering as their own – is a risk factor. When a patient dies, the doctor or nurse takes on the family members' grief and raw pain as they try to help them cope. "And that suffering splashes up on you," he says. "You're exposed."
States will need to establish network adequacy standards for Medicaid managed care providers under a final rule issued Monday by CMS."Today's final rule has four goals: supporting states' efforts to advance delivery system reform; strengthening the consumer experience of care; strengthening program integrity; and aligning rules across health insurance coverage programs to improve efficiency and help consumers," said Vikki Wachino, MPP, director for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services at CMS,
An advisory panel to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), called to discuss definitions of treatment-resistant depression, met for a day and voted on several points, but ended the meeting without offering such a definition. What the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) did do was express a high confidence level in certain criteria for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) that, members said, could be used as a research definition and translated to clinical use.
Hospital quality watchdog Leapfrog is out with its spring ratings of hospitals, and although 798 hospitals scored an A grade and 639 hospitals got a B, that leaves 2,134 hospitals with Cs, Ds or Fs. Whether you’re one to look at the glass half full or half empty, consider these numbers: The A and B hospitals together number 1,437 – while the C,D, and F hospitals combined number 2,134, or 607 more not "making the grade," so to speak. According to the report, 957 hospitals rated a C, 1,162 a D and 15 an F.
In the emergency room, patients may expect doctors to call all the shots about tests and treatments. But increasingly, ER physicians are asking patients to participate more in critical decisions about care, such as whether to opt for surgery or undergo a scan with radiation exposure. Making such choices can be daunting for patients and families, but in cases where the diagnosis isn’t life-threatening. Now, to help patients and families weigh the evidence and compare risks and benefits, hospitals are developing so-called shared decision-making aids tailored to emergency situations.
After the federal government spurred hospitals to adopt electronic health records seven years ago, scribes have proliferated in emergency rooms and outpatient settings. Medical scribes are largely unregulated; no license is required. At PhysAssist, scribes get 40 hours of training, in which they learn medical vocabulary, privacy law, and how to write charts, according to spokesman Cameron Cushman.