The Role of Safety-Net Hospitals in Reducing Disparities in Breast Cancer Care.

Advances in breast cancer screening and systemic therapies have been credited with profound improvements in breast cancer outcomes; indeed, 5-year relative survival rate approaches 91% in the USA (U.S. National Institutes of Health NCI. SEER Training Modules, Breast). While breast cancer mortality has been declining, oncologic outcomes have not improved equally among all races and ethnicities. Many factors have been implicated in breast cancer disparities; chief among them is limited access to care which contributes to lower rates of timely screening mammography and, once diagnosed with breast cancer, lower rates of receipt of guideline concordant care (Wu, Lund, Kimmick GG et al. in J Clin Oncol 30(2):142-150, 2012). Hospitals with a safety-net mission, such as the essential hospitals, historically have been dedicated to providing high-quality care to all populations and have eagerly embraced the role of caring for the most vulnerable and working to eliminate health disparities. In this article, we review landmark articles that have evaluated the role safety-net hospitals have played in providing equitable breast cancer care including to those patients who face significant social and economic challenges.

Everyone agrees the ACA isn't perfect, but let's 'fix and innovate; not 'repeal and replace'.

The House Republicans' campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act and shrink Medicaid funding has produced a lot of drama-and an unexpected realization for repeal proponents: People like the ACA. And they're pretty fond of Medicaid, too.

Improving cardiovascular care through outpatient cardiac rehabilitation: an analysis of payment models that would improve quality and promote use.

BACKGROUND: Much attention has been paid to improving the care of patients with cardiovascular disease by focusing attention on delivery system redesign and payment reforms that encompass the healthcare spectrum, from an acute episode to maintenance of care. However, 1 area of cardiovascular disease care that has received little attention in the advancement of quality is cardiac rehabilitation (CR), a comprehensive secondary prevention program that is significantly underused despite evidence-based guidelines that recommending its use. PURPOSE: The purpose of this article was to analyze the applicability of 2 payment and reimbursement models-pay-for-performance and bundled payments for episodes of care--that can promote the use of CR. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that a payment model combining elements of both pay-for-performance and episodes of care would increase the use of CR, which would both improve quality and increase efficiency in cardiac care. Specific elements would need to be clearly defined, however, including: (a) how an episode is defined, (b) how to hold providers accountable for the care they provider, (c) how to encourage participation among CR providers, and (d) how to determine an equitable distribution of payment. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Demonstrations testing new payment models must be implemented to generate empirical evidence that a melded pay-for-performance and episode-based care payment model will improve quality and efficiency.

The use of and satisfaction with the Emergency Severity Index.

INTRODUCTION: The Emergency Severity Index (ESI) is a 5-level emergency department triage algorithm designed to facilitate the sorting and streaming of patients. The purpose of this study was to assess the use of the ESI in emergency departments, including satisfaction with the ESI, usefulness of the ESI compared with other triage algorithms, and lessons learned from implementation. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire was sent to 935 people who requested the ESI training materials from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and who volunteered to participate in a study about the ESI. The response rate for the survey was 42% (n = 392). Telephone interviews were conducted with an additional 19 ED professionals. Descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis were used in the data analysis. RESULTS: Three hundred twenty-two survey respondents (82%) reported that they use the ESI in their emergency department. Satisfaction with the ESI triage algorithm is high. ESI users indicated that the ESI is more accurate than other triage algorithms and that its strengths are simplicity of use and the ability to reduce the subjectivity of triage. DISCUSSION: The majority of ED professionals who reported using the ESI were very satisfied with the tool. Users found that it was more accurate than other triage algorithms and reduced the subjectivity of the triage process. Both survey and interview findings indicated that few emergency departments have formally assessed the impact of the ESI on ED operations.

A field test of time-based emergency department quality measures.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: We examine practical aspects of collecting time-based emergency department (ED) performance measures. METHODS: Seven measures were implemented in 6 hospitals during 1 year. Structured interviews were used to assess the benefits and burdens of reporting. In 2 hospitals, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) sample size requirements for 3 measures were compared to a reasonable sample size estimate (in which 95% of samples fell within 15 minutes of the population median). RESULTS: ED performance data on 29,587 admitted patients and 127,467 discharged patients were reported. Median throughput time for admitted patients ranged from 327 to 663 minutes and for discharged patients ranged from 143 to 311 minutes. Other performance measures varied similarly (2- to 3-fold between hospitals). In general, ED throughput was longer at academic sites and those with higher volume. Several benefits of reporting were identified, including promoting ED quality improvement, accountability, and practice standardization. The burdens included having to access multiple information technology systems and difficulties setting up the data collection. Most respondents found great value in the throughput measures and time to pain medication but less value in time to chest radiograph. The human capital required to implement measures varied by hospital and staff demonstrated a learning curve. Our empirically derived minimum reliable sample sizes were different from CMS recommendations. CONCLUSION: There is great variation in performance between EDs in time-based ED measures. There are multiple reporting benefits. Reporting burdens seemed to lessen after data systems were established. The CMS sample size requirements for throughput measures may not be optimal compared with actual ED throughput data.

A quality improvement framework for equity in cardiovascular care: results of a national collaborative.

Disparities in the quality of cardiovascular care provided to minorities have been well documented, but less is known about the use of quality improvement methods to eliminate these disparities. Measurement is also often impeded by a lack of reliable patient demographic data. The objective of this study was to assess the ability of hospitals with large minority populations to measure and improve the care rendered to Black and Hispanic patients. The Expecting Success: Excellence in Cardiac Care project utilized the standardized collection of self-reported patient race, ethnicity, and language data to generate stratified performance measures for cardiac care coupled with evidence-based practice tools in a national competitively selected sample of 10 hospitals with high cardiac volumes and largely minority patient populations. Main outcomes included changes in nationally recognized measures of acute myocardial infarction and heart failure quality of care and 2 composite measures, stratified by patient demographic characteristics. Quality improved significantly at 7 of the 10 hospitals as gauged by composite measures (p < .05), and improvements exceeded those observed nationally for all hospitals. Three of 10 hospitals found racial or ethnic disparities which were eliminated in the course of the project. Clinicians and institutions were able to join the standardized collection of self-reported patient demographic data to evidence-based measures and quality improvement tools to improve the care of minorities and eliminate disparities in care. This framework may be replicable to ensure equity in other clinical areas.

Measuring healthcare disparities and racial segregation in Missouri nursing homes.

Measuring and, ultimately, addressing disparities in long-term care quality continue to be a challenge. Although literature suggests that disparities in healthcare quality exist and nursing homes remain relatively segregated, healthcare professionals and policymakers stand to benefit from improvements in measuring both racial segregation and healthcare disparities. This paper quantifies the relationships between healthcare disparities and racial segregation using the disparities quality index and dissimilarity index. Results suggested that the more segregated the nursing homes, the greater the observed disparities. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that the proportion of Black residents in nursing homes is the variable that best predicts disparities.

Practical implications of implementing emergency department crowding interventions: summary of a moderated panel.

Emergency department (ED) crowding continues to be a major public health problem in the United States and around the world. In June 2011, the Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference focused on exploring interventions to alleviate ED crowding and to generate a series of research agendas on the topic. As part of the conference, a panel of leaders in the emergency care community shared their perspectives on emergency care, crowding, and some of the fundamental issues facing emergency care today. The panel participants included Drs. Bruce Siegel, Sandra Schneider, Peter Viccellio, and Randy Pilgrim. The panel was moderated by Dr. Jesse Pines. Dr. Siegel's comments focused on his work on Urgent Matters, which conducted two multihospital collaboratives related to improving ED crowding and disseminating results. Dr. Schneider focused on the future of ED crowding measures, the importance of improving our understanding of ED boarding and its implications, and the need for the specialty of emergency medicine (EM) to move beyond the discussion of unnecessary visits. Dr. Viccellio's comments focused on several areas, including the need for a clear message about unnecessary ED visits by the emergency care community and potential solutions to improve ED crowding. Finally, Dr. Pilgrim focused on the effect of effective leadership and management in crowding interventions and provided several examples of how these considerations directly affected the success or failure of well-constructed ED crowding interventions. This article describes each panelist's comments in detail.

The past, present, and future of urgent matters: lessons learned from a decade of emergency department flow improvement.

Over the past decade, emergency departments (ED) have encountered major challenges due to increased crowding and a greater public focus on quality measurement and quality improvement. Responding to these challenges, many EDs have worked to improve their processes and develop new and innovative models of care delivery. Urgent Matters has contributed to ED quality and patient flow improvement by working with hospitals throughout the United States. Recognizing that EDs across the country are struggling with many of the same issues, Urgent Matters-a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)-has sought to identify, develop, and disseminate innovative approaches, interventions, and models to improve ED flow and quality. Using a variety of techniques, such as learning networks (collaboratives), national conferences, e-newsletters, webinars, best practices toolkits, and social media, Urgent Matters has served as a thought leader and innovator in ED quality improvement initiatives. The Urgent Matters Seven Success Factors were drawn from the early work done by program participants and propose practical guidelines for implementing and sustaining ED improvement activities. This article chronicles the history, activities, lessons learned, and future of the Urgent Matters program.

How health care organizations are using data on patients' race and ethnicity to improve quality of care.

CONTEXT: Racial and ethnic disparities in the quality of health care are well documented in the U.S. health care system. Reducing these disparities requires action by health care organizations. Collecting accurate data from patients about their race and ethnicity is an essential first step for health care organizations to take such action, but these data are not systematically collected and used for quality improvement purposes in the United States. This study explores the challenges encountered by health care organizations that attempted to collect and use these data to reduce disparities. METHODS: Purposive sampling was used to identify eight health care organizations that collected race and ethnicity data to measure and reduce disparities in the quality and outcomes of health care. Staff, including senior managers and data analysts, were interviewed at each site, using a semi-structured interview format about the following themes: the challenges of collecting and collating accurate data from patients, how organizations defined a disparity and analyzed data, and the impact and uses of their findings. FINDINGS: To collect accurate self-reported data on race and ethnicity from patients, most organizations had upgraded or modified their IT systems to capture data and trained staff to collect and input these data from patients. By stratifying nationally validated indicators of quality for hospitals and ambulatory care by race and ethnicity, most organizations had then used these data to identify disparities in the quality of care. In this process, organizations were taking different approaches to defining and measuring disparities. Through these various methods, all organizations had found some disparities, and some had invested in interventions designed to address them, such as extra staff, extended hours, or services in new locations. CONCLUSION: If policymakers wish to hold health care organizations accountable for disparities in the quality of the care they deliver, common standards will be needed for organizations' data measurement, analysis, and use to guide systematic analysis and robust investment in potential solutions to reduce and eliminate disparities.

Residents' awareness of racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular care.

PURPOSE: To characterize attitudes of residents toward racial/ethnic disparities in health care and to explore the effect of a simple intervention to improve awareness of these disparities. METHODS: The authors surveyed residents in internal and emergency medicine rotating through the Coronary Care Unit of a major teaching hospital about their attitudes toward disparities in cardiovascular care before and after an intervention that fostered discussion of evidence for the existence of disparities, possible causes of disparities, and clinically focused approaches to quality improvement tailored to the residents' practice environment. RESULTS: Before the intervention, 35% of residents agreed that racial/ethnic disparities might occur for patients within the US health care system in general, and only 7% agreed that patients they personally treated might experience racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare. These proportions increased significantly after the intervention: 85% agreement at level of US health care system and 32% at the level of individual practice (P < .001). Changes in awareness did not differ by sex, postgraduate year of training, race/ethnicity, reported prior diversity training, or plans to subspecialize. CONCLUSION: Awareness of racial/ethnic disparities in care among residents remains low, particularly at the level of individual practice, but is amenable to intervention.