Blog 8

Independent Review Supports Transparency

http://www.psqh.com/sepoct08/peer.html

The article I'm blogging on this week speaks about how hospitals are realizing how important transparency is. The CMS has started publicly reporting 30-day mortality measures for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia. JCAHO even has standards to monitor safety and quality of care concerns. This article also cites the 5 Million Lives Campaign that we watched a video on.

One of the tools they focused on is "independent peer review". I agree with the use of this tool because someone outside is much less likely to be biased. If physicians review each other, they could either be friends or not like each other. Either of these situations will give inaccurate results.

"With independent peer review, medical records may be reviewed for standard of care, experimental/investigational procedures or treatments, mortalities or sentinel events, physician practice patterns, or medical necessity." In this case, people's opinions and feelings would not influence the review.

Some of the issues that would warrant an Independent Review are:

Ethical Issues
Systems Issues
Clinical Credentialing Issues
Clinical Outcomes Issues
Documentation Issues
Professional/Interpersonal Behavior Issues
Clinical Competency/Privileging Issues

As we saw in the movie, "The Doctor," physicians will cover for their fellow physicians when there is trouble. I would rather know my physician was given an impartial review. If a doctor thinks he/she can hide something, I might not get the level of care I would if they knew someone was watching them closely and not going to cover for their mistakes.

Ten Ways To Recognize Hearing Loss

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/NidcdInternet/Templates/InternetTopicNavigation.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID={ECB057D5-6F29-4F03-B835-D391CAE99F0F}&NRORIGINALURL=%2fhealth%2fhearing%2f10ways.asp&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest

The AHRQ tool I chose this week has to do with hearing loss. It is basically a questionnaire to determine if you have hearing loss. The reason I chose this tool is because I've been wondering if I now have some hearing loss.

The questionnaire is as follows:

The following questions will help you determine if you need to have your hearing evaluated by a medical professional:

Do you have a problem hearing over the telephone?
Yes No

Do you have trouble following the conversation when two or more people are talking at the same time?
Yes No

Do people complain that you turn the TV volume up too high?
Yes No

Do you have to strain to understand conversation?
Yes No

Do you have trouble hearing in a noisy background?
Yes No

Do you find yourself asking people to repeat themselves?
Yes No

Do many people you talk to seem to mumble (or not speak clearly)?
Yes No

Do you misunderstand what others are saying and respond inappropriately?
Yes No

Do you have trouble understanding the speech of women and children?
Yes No

Do people get annoyed because you misunderstand what they say?
Yes No

If you answer yes to 3 or more of these questions, you probably need to have your hearing checked. For those who know me well, I don't even have to report my results.

This week I want to comment on Rajni's blog. She wrote about the benefits of the intranet. I agree that the intranet is a very good communication tool for facilities. This is a way of communicating with employees without exposing information to outside eyes.