Impact of critical care nursing on 30-day mortality of mechanically ventilated older adults.

OBJECTIVES: The mortality rate for mechanically ventilated older adults in ICUs is high. A robust research literature shows a significant association between nurse staffing, nurses' education, and the quality of nurse work environments and mortality following common surgical procedures. A distinguishing feature of ICUs is greater investment in nursing care. The objective of this study is to determine the extent to which variation in ICU nursing characteristics-staffing, work environment, education, and experience-is associated with mortality, thus potentially illuminating strategies for improving patient outcomes. DESIGN: Multistate, cross-sectional study of hospitals linking nurse survey data from 2006 to 2008 with hospital administrative data and Medicare claims data from the same period. Logistic regression models with robust estimation procedures to account for clustering were used to assess the effect of critical care nursing on 30-day mortality before and after adjusting for patient, hospital, and physician characteristics. SETTING: Three hundred and three adult acute care hospitals in California, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. PATIENTS: The patient sample included 55,159 older adults on mechanical ventilation admitted to a study hospital. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Patients in critical care units with better nurse work environments experienced 11% lower odds of 30-day mortality than those in worse nurse work environments. Additionally, each 10% point increase in the proportion of ICU nurses with a bachelor's degree in nursing was associated with a 2% reduction in the odds of 30-day mortality, which implies that the odds on patient deaths in hospitals with 75% nurses with a bachelor's degree in nursing would be 10% lower than in hospitals with 25% nurses with a bachelor's degree in nursing. Critical care nurse staffing did not vary substantially across hospitals. Staffing and nurse experience were not associated with mortality after accounting for these other nurse characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: Patients in hospitals with better critical care nurse work environments and higher proportions of critical care nurses with a bachelor's degree in nursing experienced significantly lower odds of death.

Toward better access to health insurance coverage for U.S. retirees in Mexico.

Many retirees from the United States of America have limited health insurance coverage while living in Mexico. Medicare and Medicaid benefits are not portable to other countries and Medigap (private insurance that supplements Medicare) is very limited. This causes economic and medical hardships and serves as a barrier to retirement to Mexico. Increasing numbers of U.S. retirees will be interested in moving to Mexico in the future because of the climate, the culture, and the lower cost of living. The numbers are increasing as a result of several factors such as aging "baby boomers" and the rapidly growing Mexican-origin population in the U.S.A. who are citizens or permanent residents but would like to return to their communities of origin after working in the U.S.A. There are several policy initiatives that could provide opportunities for improving health insurance coverage for these retirees that could be cost-effective.

Adapting to the ANSI 835 transaction set.

Adapting to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 835 Health Care Claims Payment/Advice format--the first nationwide, all-payer electronic standard for healthcare claims--requires an approach tailored to the individual provider's system. Providers have four options for receiving ANSI 835 claims payments. They include: direct transmission from payers, value added network services (VANs), banks with electronic data interchange capabilities, and paper reports. Providers' claims processing systems vary enormously in the formats they use and in their capacities to transmit and receive claims payments electronically. Author Romo reviews factors that providers need to consider when refining internal capabilities and selecting external processors to accept the 835 format.