High-risk proposition: Part 1 | With CMS’ ‘value-based purchasing’ model, struggling hospitals are wondering if they can afford the IT needed to make it work

By Cinda Becker | December 03, 2007 | Basic Web

Despite its relatively small size and challenged balance sheet, Rush North Shore Medical Center has enthusiastically boarded the quality improvement train with some impressive results.
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States’ rights and wrongs: Part 2 | Hospitals and their state associations are trying to move their nonbilling policies for adverse events past the talking phase

By Jean DerGurahian | December 10, 2007 | Basic Web

A growing number of hospitals across the country are making promises to stop billing patients and payers for care related to certain medical errors, but the efforts appear to be more of a public relations move than a substantive change. State associations that have or are looking at nonbinding, voluntary limits on such billing include those in Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and Vermont.
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Profitable complications: Part 3 | One analysis says that in some cases infections can actually help a hospital boost its bottom line, but naysayers disagree

By Cinda Becker | December 17, 2007 | Basic Web

Wiping out infections from hospitals may not be the financial slam-dunk it’s cracked up to be, which might explain a lot of the inertia surrounding infection control.
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