DorlandHealth

The Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is helping to push cancer treatment into exciting new grounds of individualized care. The recently launched Personalized Cancer Medicine Initiative offers patients “genotyping” of tumors at the DNA level, which can elevate the use of appropriate therapy based on a person’s unique disease progression. Thus far doctors are scouring the DNA of patients with lung cancer and melanoma.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released a report on emergency department utilization and found that, in 2007, 12.5 percent of ED admissions were caused by or related to behavioral health issues or substance abuse. Of the expenditures related to these visits, 30 percent were billed to Medicare and nearly 20 percent were billed to Medicaid. According to the report, which was released in July, behavioral health-related ED visits were two and a half times more likely to result in a hospital admission than other causes. A total of 41 percent of all behavioral health-related ED visits resulted in a hospital admission.

To help its members select the best services, and to instill price transparency and satisfaction rates, Capital BlueCross recently launched an online tool that provides information on nearly 60 of the most common services provided by hospitals and surgical and imaging centers. MyCare Advisor, as the comparison tool is known, is meant to foster consumer engagement. Cost information comes from BlueCross’s claims data, which will soon include a nationwide database. Local information like contact data for facilities also is included.

According to a study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, hospitalists are often unaware of the cost of services and tests provided to inpatients. Measuring the percentage of hospitalists who could accurately estimate the cost of common services, such as a CT scan or a chest X-ray, researchers found that just one-tenth of hospitalists ballparked the figure within 10 percent of the actual cost, something that does not jibe with healthcare reform’s call for increased cost control.

The role of hospitals and their diverse workforce is rapidly expanding. No longer a place where clinical care is the sole focus, today’s hospital must encompass a care delivery paradigm that reaches the heart of the individual patient’s needs—especially when that patient has unique cultural or communication needs.

A new report from the Joint Commission seeks to address these needs. Titled “Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient- and Family-Centered Care,” the far-reaching guide is a roadmap for counteracting lower quality care due variables like race, ethnicity, language, disability and sexual orientation. As the title suggests, the roadmap is anchored by a three-pronged approach centering on communication, cultural competency, and patient-centered care, resulting in a viable how-to source for direct implementation.

Over the next three weeks, Case In Point Weekly will explore the Joint Commission’s myriad recommendations and best practices across six points it deems vital in the continuum of care: admission, assessment, treatment, end-of-life care, discharge and transfer, and organization readiness. We begin with the first two.