Case Studies
The ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ Association produces case studies on its member organizations across a wide range of health-care topics.
This article presents four case studies of effective community and academic partnership that improved population health.
The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury (the Departments) on January 29, 2010 released an interim final rule implementing the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA). The MHPAEA requires insurance plans that offer…
The Problem Administrative burdens and inefficient processes left nurses spending just one-third of their time caring for patients on the 52-bed medical/surgical unit. Most of their time was doing paperwork, hunting down supplies, documents and people and other non-direct care activities. Nurses…
The Problem Pneumonia accounts for approximately 15 percent of all hospital-acquired infections and 27 percent of all infections acquired in the medical intensive care unit, according to the CDC. Mortality rates of 20 to 33 percent have been reported. The primary risk factor for hospital-acquired…
In 2005, the neonatal intensive care unit at Women and Children's Hospital of West Virginia experienced a ventilator-associated pneumonia incidence rate of 18 percent for infants weighing less than 1,500 grams. The incidence rate was 50 percent higher than the baseline standard of the Vermont…
The Problem More than one million serious medication errors occur each year in U.S. hospitals. The IOM attributes at least $3.5 billion in extra costs a year to such errors, not counting lost wages and productivity. About 10 years ago, Winthrop administrative and clinical leaders began an…
The Problem Like many hospitals, Westmoreland struggled with significant ED crowding and patient boarding. From December 2008 through February 2009, there were 2,519 inpatient admissions from the ED. The average time from the decision to admit a patient to when the patient was admitted to an…
The Problem Vanderbilt's project didn't address a problem so much as it focused on a goal: to become the safest hospital in the United States. It decided to focus on medication errors, which harm at least 1.5 million patients in U.S. hospitals each year and cost $3.5 billion annually, the…
The Problem Inefficiencies in the fast track at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital have long been a source of frustration for ED leaders, staff and patients. Between December 2008 and February 2009, there were 1,759 fast track patients and the average length of stay was 122 minutes. ED leaders…