Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Analysis

Appointment/Registration - This determines whether an individual is an established or new patient; if the patient is new, then insurance information is obtained and verified to make sure that the patient qualifies to receive services from the provider.

In 2003, The Joint Commission made one of their first goals to improve the accuracy of identifying patients to reduce or eliminate patient identification errors. This continues to be an accreditation requirement. Their recommendations to do this are to use at least two patient identifiers when administering medications, and when providing treatments or procedures. Acceptable identifiers may be the individual’s name, an assigned identification number, telephone number, or other person-specific identifier. Patient room number or physical location may not be used as an appropriate identifier. Healthcare provides should re-identify the patient with each encounter, each medication pass, and each procedure. There have been procedures and protocols throughout the country have been put into place to make the care provided to patients safer. Another element of this requirement is that all containers should be labeled in the patients presences after using the patient identifiers

UHDDS – Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set collects data elements from only inpatient health records.

Decreasing the rate of hospital readmissions has been targeted as a high priority for United States healthcare reform. Proper discharge planning that utilizes an interprofessional team, while determining appropriate patients that will benefit from such models will go a long way in reducing readmissions, meeting the patients at the level of their needs, meeting a performance measure that has been saddled with discouragement by the staff, and finally opening up access to care of patients otherwise that will have ben occupied with those that did not need or could not use it.

Improve the accuracy of patient identification. The recommendation is for all healthcare providers to institute a policy of using at least two patient identifiers when providing care, treatment, and services. This goal has two objectives, one to verify the individual as the person for whom the service or treatment for and to match the service or treatment to that individual.

Locator 1, identifies the type of insurance that the patient carries. Locator 1a, asks for the covered insurance I.D number as shown on the insurance card. Locator 2, is where you enter the patients name who received the services. Containing the first name,

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was made headlines by releasing charge and Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) installment data at the MS-DRG level for hospitals across the country. In spite of the fact that this data has long been openly accessible, having it provided more easily available brought about it by being reported of various media outlets. Tragically, this information discharge was not accompanied by expert information clarifying what the numbers mean, creating an interest for hospital facilities to react, at the end of the day, to forceful request in regards to their charging practices.

A nursing facility should not admit a patient who incorporates a MI or ID identification unless the suitable state agency has determined that the individual meets the criteria to receive the level of care a nursing facility provides and whether or not people seeking nursing home placement require high intensity services. This policy permits the resident to be cleared to enter the population of a long term care

According to Weber & Kelley (2014) the biographical data information, such as name, address, age, date of birth and gender could help identify the person. In addition, the patient’s martial status, nationality and religion could help nurses to examine the person’s belief or special needs that may affect the healthcare treatments. Furthermore, the information of the person’s occupation can help identify their possible strengths and limitations that could affect their health status as some works might be a cause of overwhelming stress, which would have an influence on his or her health.

Many individuals see race and ethnicity as meaning the same thing but in reality they are separate and both have their own distinct identities. Race refers to the biological traits like our physical appearance, eye color, skin color and characteristics set by society that we identify with. Ethnicity on the other hand, is the culture, language, and

Lastly, a current and new survey that is used as a surveillance method is the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS). The NHCS integrates inpatient data previously collected by the NHDS with the emergency department, outpatient department, and ambulatory surgery center data collected by the NHAMCS. The integration of these two surveys along with the collection of personal identifiers such as protected health information will allow the linking of care provided to the same patient in the different facilities they may have visited as an outpatient or inpatient. “It will also be possible to link the survey data to the National Death Index and Medicaid and Medicare data to obtain a more complete picture of patient care” (CDC,2017).

The hospital has 320 inpatient beds with capacity of 80 beds in an emergency department. It employs 600 nurses and 45 staff physicians and 40 residents. The hospital system uses an EHR that supports all clinical activities. The proposed intervention is to develop and implement the enhanced discharge summary template within an EHR system that integrates prompts and automatically populated core components of a quality discharge summary (Smith et al, 2017).2 With inpatient physicians, outpatient physicians, nurses, patients, and families as customers in mind, few changes made in the pre-intervention template are: a) an addition of a section for follow-up care needs like tests, pending labs, and provider responsible for follow-up care b) an insertion of subheadings and menus that addressed crucial elements of patient’s condition like cognitive status, activity level at discharge, and indwelling lines and catheters. c) an accommodation of advanced care planning d) an elimination of a list of diagnosis as stand-alone component and assimilation as part of the problem-based hospital course (Smith et al,

Documentation that would fall under (“S”) or subjective items are symptoms or things you can not see, such as pain. Under the (“O”) you would place symptoms or items that you can clearly visualize. Any assessments, evaluations, or findings should be documented under the (“A”). Finally, the (“P”) is where any plan of action or intervention should be documented. This is where you would typically find informed consents along with any attention care plans to alleviate any health issues. Additionally, if a patient any initial treatment or medication, the results of such treatment should be put here. (“G”) is often added to the end of SOAP, which is a place designated to document any goals or expectations the healthcare professional may have for the patient. A variation of the SOAP format is problem-status-plan (PSP), which is used for patient progress and revision notes. Listed under (“P”) problems, are the patient’s previous diagnosis and or prior evaluative findings. Under (“S”) status, you will place the patients subjective information along with the objective findings. Lastly, under the second section labeled (“P”) plan, the revised plan of care for the patient.

In my opinion, discharging patients from the hospital is a complex process that is fraught with challenges. In this case, 55 years old man is a senior citizen and suffering from a severe disease he should not be discharged for a measurable time limit because it has been observed in the USA that around 20 percent of patients are readmitted within one month after their discharge from hospitals. As the matter of the payment of medical expenses of the old man is concerned, there are always arrangements on behalf of the government in all states of USA.With efforts to decrease the length of stay for hospitalized patients over the past two decades, a reasonable concern has been raised that early discharge, if premature, could increase rates of readmission.

Ambulatory services consist of an array of healthcare services offered to inpatients overnight at healthcare organizations. Funding of ambulatory services should be done at urgent care, outpatient clinics, same day surgery, group practices, mental health clinics, community health care units, diagnostic centers, and emergency rooms. In order for ambulatory services to grow, they must be funded tremendously. Its funding must be based on the desire for the government and insurers to control the cost of healthcare (United States, 2005). Additionally, funding should focus on advanced technology, which makes many surgeries and tests were previously conducted at hospital settings, safe to be conducted at freestanding centers and clinics. Expensive specialty equipments should be developed to establish centers for carrying out diagnostic tests in healthcare organizations.