Briefings on Accreditation and Quality Last year, the American Hospital Association (AHA) sent two letters to President Trump asking him to reform CMS regulatory requirements. In the letters, AHA CEO and president Rick Pollack wrote that the balance between flexibility in patient care and regulatory burden was at a tipping point. He also wrote that reducing administrative complexity would save billions annually and allow providers to spend more time on patients, not paperwork. “[CMS] and other agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released 43 hospital-related proposed and final rules in the first 10 months of the year [2016] alone, comprising almost 21,000 pages of text,” he wrote. “In addition to the sheer volume, the scope of changes required by the new regulations is beginning to outstrip the field’s ability to absorb them. Moreover, this does not include the increasing use of sub-regulatory guidance (FAQs, blogs, etc.) to implement new administrative policies.”
The letter includes a list of 33 changes the AHA wants to be made, including • Suspend hospital quality star ratings
• Suspend electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) reporting requirements
• Delete faulty hospital quality measures
• Have readmission measures reflect socio-economic factors
• Cancel stage 3 of “meaningful use” program.
• Stop federal agencies (HHS, CMS) from forcing private sector accreditors (Joint Commission, DNV, HFAP) to conform with government accreditation standards
• Refocus the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) on certifying electronic health records
Changing the healthcare industry was a major topic during the past election cycle, and there are many questions on what will change under the new administration.  Editor's note: This is an excerpt from the HCPro book The Survey Coordinator's Handbook, 18th Edition, by Jodi L. Eisenberg, MHA, CPHQ, CPMSM, CSHA.
The leadership standards truly are the cornerstone of the standards manual, just as leadership is the cornerstone of any successful organization. These standards focus on three primary themes: organization and accountability, communication and culture, and operations and performance improvement. They ask key questions, such as who are the leaders in your organization? What is the structure of your management organization? How do they communicate up, down, and across the organization? Leaders are responsible and accountable for performance improvement and patient safety. Therefore, if issues identified in other chapters represent patterns or trends that potentially show lack of leadership, lack of resources, etc., the buck stops with leadership. That’s why RFIs in leadership usually come in tandem with observations and findings in other chapters. That said, there are still leadership-specific issues that continue to be high risk or problem prone.
Marketing Spotlight Today, the CAHPS survey often doesn’t capture the entire picture when it comes to customer satisfaction. To meaningfully improve the patient experience, an organizationwide, proactive approach to patient-centered care is needed. Beyond CAHPS: A Guide for Achieving Patient- and Family-Centered Care gives healthcare providers the knowledge to construct a top-notch patient experience.
This book will help you:
• Understand how patient satisfaction has evolved into patient experience and patient-centered care
• Set up an effective patient-centered care structure throughout your organization
• Use data to effectively illustrate current progress and identify improvements and goals
• Plan how to work with staff and leadership to provide the best patient-centered care possible
About the Author:
Janiece Gray is a co-founder and CEO of DTA Associates Inc., a healthcare consulting firm focused on helping providers achieve patient-centered improvement goals. Janiece and her team are uniquely positioned to partner with clinical care teams and operations leadership to develop custom solutions to enhance patient experience, improve clinical outcomes, and streamline processes. She has more than 20 years of experience in patient care, healthcare administration and operations, performance improvement, and patient experience.
Editor's Picks February 14, 2017
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