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HEALTHY SKIN I Letter from the Editor DEAR READER, Recently, CMS released the final PPS rule for hospitals. This is a significant policy change that will ultimately improve the quality of care by no longer paying for preventable conditions that are acquired in hospitals. These conditions include pressure sores, UTIs and falls. What do you think will happen next? It’s only a matter of time before reimbursement for LTC and home health are also centered around patient outcomes and more costeffective healthcare by putting the focus on prevention. Patient hand-off between healthcare providers will be a major focus in the future. To that end, we intend to continue to bring you industry news and examples of successful collaborations. We invite you to share your experiences – both good and bad – so that others can learn and benefit. Please feel free to contact me at smacinnes@medline.com with anything you would like to share. Once again included in this edition are the key initiatives in home health and long-term care (see Page 6). Notice the icons at the bottom of this page. You will see these icons throughout the magazine whenever an article supports one of these quality goals. Then, on Page 11, follow the crosswalk of national initiatives. The Web site addresses of these organizations are provided so that you can explore the resources available to assist you in your practice.
If you would, please take a moment to complete the survey on the following page and tell us your biggest challenges. We want to direct future content to address your pressing concerns by first sharing the results in our next issue and then by tailoring future articles to give you those practical solutions that target your needs. We know that your concerns on the job also include daily interactions with peers and motivating your staff. To that end, we’ve included an article titled “Respect” to remind us of how important it is to manage the interaction between our co-workers and professionals from other healthcare entities. Finally, we are thrilled to feature an article by Dr. Marla Shapiro, the well-known Canadian physician, columnist, TV personality and breast cancer survivor, to inspire us all to remember the importance of our families and friends. Her story is touching and her message a wake-up call to take care of ourselves and to balance our lives between our work, family and self.
We all can agree that we should do thing right ... but it is our goal to make it hard for the healthcare worker to do things wrong.
Best regards,
Sue MacInnes, RD, LD
Content Key We’ve coded the articles and information in this magazine to indicate which National Quality initiatives they pertain to. Throughout the publication, when you see these icons you’ll know immediately that the subject matter on that page relates to one or more of the following national initiatives: • QIO – Utilization and Quality Control Peer Review Organization • Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes We’ve tried to include content that clarifies the initiatives or give you ideas and tools for implementing their recommendations. For a summary of each of the above initiatives, see Page 6.
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