Editor's Note The Joint Commission on July 24 named five hospitals/healthcare systems as 2019 Pioneers in Quality Expert Contributors for their leadership efforts in using electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) practices to drive their quality improvement. The five are: Baptist Health (Jacksonville, Florida) Johns Hopkins Health System (Baltimore, Maryland) Memorial…

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As part of a special series on artificial intelligence (AI), OR Manager is taking a deep dive into the many facets of this new technology and its impact on patient care. In this issue we continue our examination of the challenges related to AI, which began in last month’s issue…

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Editor's Note The Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness has teamed up with the American College of Surgeons (ACS) to develop a value-based measurement program for hospitals and surgical practices. The program, “Transforming Healthcare Resources to Increase Value and Efficiency [ACS THRIVE],” will be tested at 10 to…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers developed service- and surgeon-specific statistical models using linear regression and machine learning to predict case-time duration at a large academic medical center. Results showed: The machine-learning algorithm had the highest predictive capability. The surgeon-specific was superior to the service-specific model, with higher accuracies and…

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Editor's Note In this study, overlapping surgery in a tertiary care colorectal surgery practice was found to be safe and not linked to adverse patient outcomes. Of 1,270 patients having inpatient colorectal surgery at the Mayo Clinic, between 2012 and 2015, overlapping surgery occurred in 576 patients. Overall adverse events…

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Editor's Note The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on July 9 that it has formed a summit of key industry stakeholders and government leaders to provide insight as the Trump administration seeks to streamline, improve, and align measures used across federal healthcare quality programs. The Quality Summit,…

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Editor's Note In this study, a predictive model that can help identify patients at higher odds for not requiring a prolonged hospital length of stay (LOS) after total hip arthroplasty was developed and validated and a point-based calculator was designed. The calculator included nine variables: age, opioid use, metabolic equivalents…

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Editor's Note Retooling paper-based measures to electronic format for reporting performance measures can help reduce hospitals’ reporting burden. However, in this study by Joint Commission and State University of New York researchers, a simplified risk model using electronic health record (EHR) elements could not capture most risk factors in the…

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Editor's Note A new scoring system reveals a strong agreement between patient-reported and physician-reported outcomes after surgery, the Mayo Clinic reports. The study enrolled 100 patients who had elbow or shoulder surgery. The average time between surgery and follow-up was 31 months. In the categorical ratings, patients and physicians agreed…

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Editor's Note The ECRI Institute on June 20 announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had awarded it with the Network of Quality Improvement and Innovation Contractors (NQIIC) designation. With this designation and partnering with other quality improvement contractors under the new CMS Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quanity (IDIQ)…

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