Challenged by the status determination process, many hospitals often inappropriately admit patients into observation or inpatient status. The nature of the challenge is illustrated in the exhibit below, which shows that observation rates among different CMS regions vary by as many as 8 percentage points.

An acute care hospital cannot begin to be able to deliver cost-effective care if it lacks a fully coordinated approach for moving patients from admission to discharge.

Placing a patient in the most appropriate level of care is important to both the patient and the hospital. Find out impacts and best practices on observation management from Claro Healthcare.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created both a labor and skills shortage in registered nurses across the country. Explore ways to promote a resilient nursing workforce from Claro Healthcare.

A six-step initiative by Orlando Health in central Florida to eliminate avoidable variation in healthcare delivery reduced the health system’s average length of stay (LOS) by roughly 0.75 days, while yielding a corresponding financial benefit of about $1.2 million.

Bringing together clinician “huddles” for quick reviews of the status of patients under observation was just one step that enabled the Florida health system to substantially reduce length of stay among observation patients, thereby reducing costs and increasing revenues by tens of millions of dollars.

By identifying unnecessary spend and changing expensive clinical practice patterns, a four-hospital system achieved nearly $2 million in pharmacy cost savings.

A New York hospital offers a case example of how to undertake performance improvement on a systemwide scale to prepare for value-based care.